Ninjago AU2-Kingdom of Serpents and Thieves
by LadyMarissaGarmadon
Summary: Ninjago has four secret protectors of their land & a little vigilante adorned in red. When an age old terror is unleashed on the land who kidnaps the prince; Wu must leave the boys on their own to unlock their full powers as he goes to find the only man that can help him get Lloyd back. Two sides of the scale were in perfect balance & it was shattered when the day met the night.
1. Prologue

Not two months ago, Prince Lloyd Garmadon and his guardian in white, Zane, a royal assassin, were attacked by Lord Garmadon's skeleton army and fled, hiding in a small village miles away from the Imperial City.

They hid away at the home of a young blacksmith named Kai Blackman and his twin sister Nya, who secretly was the thief taking the valley by storm with her shenanigans, and their cousin, Daisie, their legal guardian and best friend.

Along the way, they met Cole Stone, a miner who was out of a job when an accident happened, living with his father and two sisters and brother. They learned he had lost his mother when he was young because of an attack by the very skeletons that nearly took Lloyd the day prior.

During the rest of their short stay, the teens befriended Jay, a young inventor who also had a golden weapon and a dragon same as Kai, Cole, and Zane.

It was also learned that Kai, Cole, Jay, and Lloyd's parents were all good friends a long time ago, before the boys were even born.

The old and wise king of Ninjago, Wu, recruited each one to become the next masters of Spinjitsu who he would train to be great warriors and heroes. They would be the new owners of the Golden Weapons of Spinjitsu that created their world thousands of years ago by The First Spinjitsu Master.

Together, they traveled to the Underworld and rescued Kai's kidnapped sister. The four young men found the courage to enter the domain of Lord Garmadon, Sensei Wu's older brother and rightful heir to the throne of Ninjago, to destroy him so he may never cause the land harm again.

Almost defeated; the ninjas' lives were spared and watched as the dark lord double crossed his general, Samukai, making him turn to ashes, leaving a portal Garmadon used to escape his eternal prison to a different realm, and leaving the ninja to do nothing but return home to the land of the living.

Now the five teenagers live at the castle under orders of Wu, who put upon the five to not speak of the things they saw or their new roles as protectors of the land.

The only outsiders to know of their new identities were Daisie Blackman and Ed and Edna Walker, Kai and Jay's families. Nya has also kept her mother's legacy, The Red Mask, a secret as well, telling not even her own brother or cousin.

They train day in and day out, knowing the time will come when Garmadon would return to take the crown back from his brother and plunge the land into darkness.

And miles away, hiding away from people, but more specifically, Lloyd and Wu, was the ever watchful Misako Garmadon, studying and following the ninja to make sure they remain on the right path, waiting for the right time in which to step up to aid them.

Because after all, Ninjago is a kingdom of venomous bandits, and darkness was coming, and it wouldl not be so kind to the young heroes of Ninjago.

**Okay so this is prologue recap sort of thing... my mom has only read the first... four of this one to help with grammar and just because she wants to continue reading the series. **

**So this one will take a bit longer to get uploaded but I hope you'll find it as entertaining as the first part :) **

**So thanks for sticking around reading! :D **

**~Mar**


	2. Boredom Bred the Troublemaker

"I'm gonna get you Lloyd!" Kai crept through the starkly lit hallway with suits of armor lining it. Kai's own samurai suit pads squeaked because of the leather material. He leaned over and started checking below. "Here I come…" he laughed as he started acting like the giants in fairytales. "Feee fiiii fooo…"

"What are you doing!?" He heard Wu's abrupt and loud voice and jumped, his head hitting an arm of the suits, sending a couple toppling over.

"OUCH!" he shouted and looked up. "Sensei! Uh… you're highness! I-" he quickly stood up and bowed low, head pounding from the bang.

"That's alright…" Wu quickly said, holding a hand out. "Lloyd, get out here, master Kai has work to do… that does not involve playing silly games with you…" He testily said, tapping his foot.

"Aww," Lloyd came out, pouting from down the long hallway. "Okay, see you later master Kai," Lloyd bowed. He then looked up and quickly hugged the taller teen around the waist and ran off to find someone else who would play with him.

Kai sighed watching the young prince run off down the dark hall and turned around to do as Wu instructed him, which always seemed to involve more Spinjitsu, sword, and dragon riding practice.

Lloyd ran up to the top where Cole was watching the four dragons. He observed the strongest ninja as he gave the dragons hand signals to communicate better with them. "Cole, can you play with me?" Lloyd politely asked, walking out the rest of the way. "Or take me up on one of the dragons? It's been a while and you promised…"

"Sorry your highness, but I'm afraid not now. They're just getting their free flight time," Cole apologetically looked at the pleading child. Lloyd sighed and ran back down. The black ninja guiltily looked back.

"Mister Jay? Miss Nya?" Lloyd stuck his head in on the two. They were winding something up with their gadgets. The prince curiously walked over and peeked in. Jay and Nya were always inventing something new. He especially liked the small toys they'd made him throughout the past month and a half they'd been living here.

"Oh Lloyd… what is it?" Nya removed her goggles, obviously not paying attention, engrossed in her tools but still smiled. "Something important?"

"Stop working and play with me," Lloyd pouted. "Kai and Cole can't… can you two?"

"No Lloyd," Jay sighed. "We're busy too…" the blue ninja went back to his work with the girl to his right. Lloyd growled in frustration and ran to find Zane. Surely Zane would play with him, same as always!

"No".

"What!?" Lloyd asked, annoyed. The open doors of the chamber blew out the many white candles.

Zane opened one icy blue eye and looked at the boy. He lowered his hands and sighed. "Lloyd, we talked about meditation and my alone time practice…"

"But you always play with me!" Lloyd growled. "I order you to play with me!" he stomped his left foot a couple times.

"No, stop being such a toddler. Now go; I am quite sure the king has some form of studies for you or something to occupy your time," Zane lit a match and started lighting the candles again and seated himself on the royal blue cushion, rubbing his eyes with one hand.

Lloyd blew out a puff of air and ran out. The young prince was fed up with people telling him 'no'. Finally he had friends to play with and they all were working, just his luck. He tried to find his uncle to complain to him, but found an old map lain out on his desk that greatly intrigued him instead.

Lloyd curiously looked at it with a frown. "Serpentine?" he blinked. "Hehe, these things look cool! Why haven't I read about them?" he asked himself. "Hmm, I wonder if anyone would notice if I was gone…" Lloyd smirked and ran out with the map. "Time for an adventure!"

The five friends walked up to the steps of their living quarters. It was quite cold from them being away all day, winter was almost over and Spring came rather fast in the south part of the kingdom. Cole struck a match to light the stone fire place and tossed in more tinder wood.

"That was tiring…" Kai flopped on his bed, groaning. He laid his sword against the bed post. The red sheets wrinkled under his weight.

"Yea, but maybe we can have some fun now… let's go find Lloyd," Nya stretched. The others seemed to think that was a good idea and got up. After all, they did say no to the boy all day.

Downstairs Wu was pacing back and forth, obviously worried. "Uh, sir?" Cole blinked.

"Lloyd is missing as is one of my old maps…" Wu quickly said. "So far no one has seen him…" he finally stopped walking and looked at the five. "I fear the boy has gotten into trouble…"

"We'll find him, come on, he has to be somewhere in the palace!" Jay darted off. Everyone split up and started searching as well. It was a good thing the castle wasn't all that big.

Lloyd shivered, looking around the snow. He found a large stone that looked like the landmark on the map. He tilted his head and managed to move the rock away, pushing with his small arms. It revealed an opening and the curious prince lowered himself down into it.

It was a blue cavern with ice walls that reflected himself and the ice around him. He looked and noticed his lips were turning blue from the cold now. He rubbed his arms for warmth as he looked.

"Who goesss there?!" Lloyd jumped; dropping the map he stole from his uncle, and turned around.

"P-P-P-Prince Lloyd of Ni-nin-ninjago…" Lloyd shivered; he could see his own breath now.

It was a giant blue snake with yellow and white markings. He had swirled crimson and maroon eyes with long fangs and a very long tail that was slowly coiling and uncoiling behind him. Lloyd's green eyes widened at the sight of the beast.

"Looks like we have a trespasser!" he yelled. "I, king Slithraa of the Hypnobrai, take you under captive boy…" Lloyd fell back on his bottom as Slitheraa's eyes started swirling. The prince kicked the snake and he looked up into the reflective ice.

Slitheraa seemed rather dizzy and blinked. "What-?"

Lloyd looked up and grinned. "I am Prince Lloyd and you answer to me!" Lloyd laughed, thinking he was so clever as to use the hypnosis against them.

"What would you have usss do prince?" Slithraa asked as the other snakes, much like him, came out of the deeper caves, hearing the shouts of the two.

Lloyd laughed, almost giving a devious grin, "I'm bored and no one plays with me!"

"LLOYD?!" Zane shouted.

"KIDDO?!" Kai shouted.

"PRINCE!?" Nya's voice echoed.

The palace grounds echoed with Lloyd's name and nicknames with no answer. None of the guards knew where he went and the maids never gave two looks when they said Lloyd was missing.

Everyone met back in the courtyard, nothing was found. "What are we gonna do!?" Jay frantically ran his hands through his red brown hair, panicking.

"He must have gotten out… come on!" Cole started for the gates. He whistled and Rocky swept in and he climbed on. The others did the same and Nya climbed on Wisp with Jay.

"Maybe he's in the Imperial City!" Zane shouted over the wind, looking down through the goggles Jay made for them so they could keep their eyes open better.

"Hopefully!" Kai shouted. "Jay, Nya, and I will search the city! You two should search the outlying area! He couldn't have gotten far!" Zane and Cole nodded.

"It's snowing up here so it shouldn't be hard to find a little green squirt!" Cole laughed. He, Zane, Rocky, and Shard broke off to the left.

**Uh oh, Lloyd's such big trouble! Who's ready for Skales? Haha**

**Thanks for reading! :D **

**~Mar**


	3. Skalely Enemy

Slitheraa's second in command walked over to the general, quiet frustrated, "I am sorry general, but we've been freed and you're playing childish games with some brat?"

"He is our leader now Skalesss, mind yoursself. I am in charge since I hold the ssstaff!" Slitheraa waved the gold serpent staff around.

Skales folded his arms and stalked off; watching Lloyd poking out of his hiding place and made sure the boy would be scared of him by one look.

"Little Prince Lloyd? Saw him running through. Had some kind of parchment with him… I thought Zane was with him but I could have been wrong," Kai and Jay were asking a shop keeper.

"Do you know which way he went?" Jay anxiously asked. "We need to bring him home… _now_," the young inventor scratched the back of his neck.

"I think that way," he pointed off to the west gates of the city.

"Thank you sir," Kai bowed. "Come on Jay…" he started off, "Nya, let's go!" he called to his twin sister. "Nya?" she was nowhere around.

"The Red Mask! Look out!" the two boys looked up as the shop keeper they just talked to yelled.

There, running on rooftops was the hometown hero of the Valley Village, clothed in her signature color with a bag of loot in her hand. She laughed loudly as people yelled and waved their fists at her.

"Huh… guess she's freelancing now," Jay folded his arms, befuddled. "Okay so where did Nya go?" he looked around.

"Come on… maybe she went shopping or something," Kai sighed. "She is a girl after all…" the two walked off in the direction of gates Lloyd supposedly ran out of, forgetting about the black haired girl.

"Shouldn't we tell Cole and Zane?" Jay asked as they ran through the streets.

"Yea okay…" Kai sighed. "You try and follow the path and find Lloyd, I'll get Cole and Zane!" he whistled and Flame soared overhead. He grabbed the hanging rope and climbed up on the red dragon's back in mid flight.

Jay sighed and huffed it out of the gates following the fire ninja. He looked around, no one to be seen. Good. "Ninja-Go!" he shouted, spinning in his electric blue tornado and appearing in his blue ninja suit, gold nun chucks on his hip instead of his gray shirt and blue vest and goggles.

"Okay that is it!" Skales hissed, "I cannot take thisss anymore! You are unfit to lead us!" Skales jabbed his blue claws at Slitheraa.

"How dare you!"

"I challenge you to a ssslither pit!" Skales shouted it. Everyone else looked at the two arguing. They all grinned and gathered around the two.

They started chanting _'slither pit' _andSlitheraa looked around, accepting the challenge as their leader. Skales laughed as the general threw his scepter to the tribe elder.

Lloyd looked around, confused and starting to get scared. Skales tied his hands together and kept him next to the elder. It looked like his fun was over now.

"What I say goes in the Slither Pit! Got it?!" the elder stood high and proud at an ice podium. He had several large levers and an arsenal of weapons behind him. "Let the battle begin!" he announced.

Skales flung himself on the general, attacking full on. The older general held him back just barely and was able to thrust his attacker off himself.

He spun around, trying to knock the opposing snake with legs off his feet with his long tail. Skales jumped over it and ran around. "Weapon time!" the elder shouted and tossed in four weapons made of ice for the two to choose.

Skales chose two swords and Slitheraa took a pickaxe and a shield. Lloyd watched as the general threw the pickaxe, Skales dodging it and coming at him with the swords.

Lloyd looked over and saw a similar looking map to Wu's embedded in the ice wall. His green eyes lit up in a sneaky way and he went to try and snag it, pulling against his ropes. The elder looked back at him suspiciously and Lloyd looked at the snake. "Uh..." he looked at Slitheraa fighting. "Go general go!" he hopped a little.

The elder looked away, assuming it was nothing and Lloyd went to grab the map and he stuffed it in his robe pockets. He looked back up and found Skales standing over Slitheraa. "OKAY THAT'S ENOUGH!" the elder shouted. "Skales is the new general!" he announced.

Lloyd watched as Slitheraa's long tail disappeared and Skales now possessed it when he was tossed the leader's staff. Skales looked at Lloyd who turned white. He cut the ropes and glared at him. "Get out of here and never come back!" he demanded.

Lloyd scrambled out of the cave and into the snow. "LLOYD?!" Lloyd looked up hearing the chorus of shouts and went even whiter than before if that was even possible.

"Uh oh…"

"THERE HE IS!" Cole shouted and slid off Rocky. "Come on kid let's go! Your uncle is _really_ upset!" the earth ninja grabbed Lloyd's hand and started dragging him along.

"Aw come on!" Lloyd tried to pull away. "It's so boring back home! I demand you release me!" Lloyd cried as the black ninja tossed him over his shoulder to carry him to Rocky instead of dragging him along.

"No," Cole pushed him up onto Rocky and seated himself on the saddle. Rocky took off and the other three met up with them in the air. Zane, Jay, and Kai looked pleased with themselves, seeing Lloyd was back in their hands.

Lloyd bit his lip and looked back at the snow capped mountain. How could he explain this one to his uncle?

**Thanks for reading! :) **

**~Mar**


	4. Hidden in Stone

"Excuse me but where did you run off to?" Kai was lying back on his bed as Nya walked in after all was said and done about finding Lloyd.

"Oh…" she went red a bit, feeling cornered. "I uh… got pulled away… uh, thought I had a lead on Lloyd… that's all…" she tried to smile and look innocent.

Kai blew some strands of brown hair out of his rolling eyes. "Sure sis…"

"Well we found Lloyd no thanks to you…" Cole growled; eyes shut. He was kneeling in front of the painting of his mother, lighting the scented candles.

"Hey I'm sorry!" Nya placed her slender hands on her hips. "I'm so sick of you guys acting like this… so blameful my goodness…" she folded her arms and went back downstairs. "Sometimes you all are impossible to be around… you know that?"

They all gave her a frown and her brown eyes hardened, "I'm gonna… tinker… or whatever…" she stalked off to be by herself.

Lloyd was being held against his will in his room. He took out the map hidden in his robes and unrolled it. Four more markers were on the map and he smiled. "I know the perfect way to get revenge on those lousy snakes…" he chuckled.

He rolled it back up and stood up. "And the best part is that the old cemetery is just outside the Imperial City's North Gates," he rattled the doorknob and frowned, seeing it was locked, though he wasn't all that surprised. What made him grin after that was the fact that the last maid to come in and make his bed forgot to take the old ones.

The prince quickly started tying sheets together and daringly tried to lower himself out his window from the higher up room. During this escape, Zane was walking down the hall and into his room, lightly knocking on the door as he unlocked, and opened it.

"Lloyd, your uncle says you may come…" Zane trailed off. The window was wide open and the white drapes billowing in the cool wind. "Oh my Lloyd, what are you up to now?" the assassin shook his head and hurried upstairs to where the others were relaxing.

"Lloyd got out _again_?!" Jay moaned, head resting on the workbench in his 'room'. He was half asleep from their first trek to find the little bothersome child who was starting to seem more like their pet dog rather than the prince they were in charge of protecting.

"Yes, but let us keep this from the king," Zane quietly said, hoping Wu was not around the corner, listening in. "No need to worry him more…"

The others all sighed or groaned and got up. Kai though looked at his sister who was coming out of their room and shook his head, "No sis, just stay here if you aren't going to be any help…" Kai folded his arms, frowning.

"Oh come on!" Nya growled. The guys seemed to be in agreement and she angrily sat down on the right side of the table's bench and looked away. "You are such boys!" she snapped at them.

The four didn't take it personally though and were out of the room before the sentence was done. Nya let out an irritated breath and got up. She smirked to herself because even though she _was _upset, she had things of her own to take care of.

She quickly made her way down the staircases with a smirk on her lips. The girl in red found her way to the equipment room she and Jay stored some of their working tools and supplies. She looked around to make sure no one was coming and she pressed the circular stone on the wall with her fist.

The stones, in a rectangular formation, sunk in and lifted up. She trotted in and struck a match to light a lantern. It was a chain reaction because more and more lit up and she doused her small match and quickly closed the stone door behind her.

Her haven of secret mechanical creations she'd made from scrap metal that she would hide away in here after Jay finished a project. And since Nya Blackman was a fantastic blacksmith, she could put her skills into something bigger and rather fancy for her own purposes.

It was an old room she found within the first week of moving in. It was pretty empty and she wondered who possessed the secret room before her. It didn't matter because she created a more secret entrance and decided it would be her personal lair.

She looked at her red cape and mask hanging up on a small stake in the wall she'd put. "Now let's get to work!" She grinned and removed the red drape over the large lump of a structure in the middle of her secret cave.

It revealed a large mech suit of red, silver, black, and gold with her symbol on it. "Time to step up my game… I have a feeling I'll be needing you soon," she patted the left knee of the mech and walked around it. One could only operate such a thing if they had enough upper body strength.

She passed her makeshift weights she used to strengthen herself and pulled out scrolls of schematics she had drawn for operating and building the masterpiece. She had been hoping for the mech to be steam powered, just like she and Jay talked about, though he never knew about her plans for the notion.

"All I need is a few more metal pins for the knees and I can try this thing out…" she muttered to herself and started lighting the stone made fireplace. Once the embers lit, she started stoking it until it became a large flame that heated the cold, secret cave up.

She took out her mallet and scraps of metal and with a grin, got to work making the parts she needed.

Lloyd doubled over, landing on his butt to catch his breath. He had to run fast out for fear of his protectors catching up and spoiling his little revenge tactic. He looked up at the old, twisted, black tree that looked like two snake heads.

The sight creeped him out, but he was going to get pay back for that wretched snake Skales for ruining the fun he was having with bossing Slitheraa and the others around. "Creepy doesn't bug me…" he shuddered, "I l-like creepy… and scary…"

The prince stood up and rolled the map up and slipped it in his robe's pockets and started forward. He looked around, trying to find a way to open the tomb. He finally decided to remove the large stone plate that had a snake pattern on it.

The young boy lifted with all of his strength until he heard the rock shift and he dragged it off and fell back down, out of breath by moving the simple plate.

Two pairs of glowing white eyes came through in the darkness of the tomb. The blonde's heart started beating faster and he tried to back up quickly.

"Who are you?" one voice said.

"We would like to know who saved us…" another said.

"And repay him," the first said.

"P-prince… Lloyd Garmadon…" Lloyd swallowed and looked at the two sets of eyes.

The owner of the voices slithered out and Lloyd's green eyes widened in surprise; a snake with two heads. "Ah, what may we do for you prince?" the taller of the heads asked.

"I uh…" Lloyd swallowed again. "I was double crossed by a lousy snake from another tribe…" Lloyd's face turned mad. "The Hypnobrai?"

"Oh, we hate those loser snakes… always thinking they are better than us!" one head spat.

"Always hypnotizing to do their bidding… the cowards," the other head said.

More snakes started poking out of the hole and looking at Lloyd who was starting to feel uneasy about what he had gotten himself into. Maybe he should have just sat in his room like a good boy and let the ninja take care of the Hypnobrai again.

"Fangtom at your service," the two heads said in unison. "We will end those miserable Hypnobrai for you… but first we have been locked up for so long… my underlings want to stretch their tails"

Lloyd looked at the many snakes under Fangtom's command, "Uh… what" he meekly asked.

"LLOOOOYD?!" the four ninja were shouting all over the place. They followed a trail that led to the cemetery.

"Guys look…" Jay pointed to the sand and dirt. "That could be Lloyd's prints…" A trail of the small prints led up the road. It could have been any child's, but then Cole noticed more.

"And these?" Cole looked at the others. There were prints of a tail trail and ones with claw marks.

The four young men looked at the other. "Oh my Lloyd… what have you done this time?" Zane sighed as he looked up the trail.

"Hey correct me if I'm wrong…" Kai started, staring in the same direction as Zane. Cole and Jay's gazes followed too. "But isn't this the quickest way to the valley? The farmland I mean…"

"Where my folks are!" Jay covered his mouth. "Come on! We gotta go!" Jay ran back to where the dragons were resting and he straddled himself to Wisp, shaking the blue dragon that was starting to doze off with the others. "Come on ol buddy, we gotta save my parents!" he shouted, pointing to the sky.

The other three looked at him; one eyebrow each rose on them. The blue ninja rolled his head back and let out a sigh "And Lloyd too… that was supposed to be implied by the way…" His fellow ninja glanced at him as they passed to mount on their own dragons and strapped their goggles on, putting their hoods down.

"Yea… sure Jay," Kai and the others shook their heads and their three dragons' eyes rolled as Kai mounted on Flame. He grabbed the leather reigns and pulled them back, Flame flapping his red and orange wings, taking off.

"Let's fly then!" Cole shouted as they took off, flying in the direction of Kai, Cole, and Jay's hometown. They knew Jay was right, though all of their families could be in danger, not just Lloyd.

**Lloyd! STAWP MAKING TROUBLE FOR OTHERS TO CLEAN UP! **

**Hehe thanks for reading ;) **


	5. Flutes

"Where is everyone?" Wu walked around the palace. "It's like I can't find anyone around today!" as he looked around.

Nya was walking up the stairs and saw Wu. She had just caught the end of the sentence and was trying to get away up o the next staircase before being questioned or even noticed.

"Ah Nya!" she slowly turned around, a look of uneasiness frozen on her face. "What have you been up to? You're a mess".

Nya wiped her hands on her red tunic and forced a smile. "I was just working on some things… I was going to take a bath right now actually…" she started stepping backwards, going to make a run for it.

"But first," he stopped her. "Where are the boys?"

Nya rolled her head back. She didn't have time to deal with this now. "Well… sir…" she scratched the back of her head, "They uh… Lloyd ran away again so the four went to find him. I have no idea where they are though…" she sighed, defeated.

"Very well then… let us go out and find them," Wu motioned for her to follow. Nya quietly groaned. There was ashes and oil all over her, but she followed. It seemed for one of the new girls around the palace, Wu was always calling her to be his right hand man… or, well, woman.

The four dragons landed outside the town, where they were last time they were lying low at Jay's house almost two month ago. When, on the ground, Zane thought he heard a bird caw and looked up.

An almost black colored falcon was looking at him. The other didn't seem to notice or care of his presence and were about to move out.

"So where are the snakes?" Jay looked around, worried. "I see tracks like someone were moving through here…"

"I don't know Jay but remain calm; we'll sort this out…" Cole assured the edgy lightning ninja. "You can't go all insane; you have no idea if they have your mom and dad".

"Zane, are you coming?" Kai looked back at Zane who was flapping his arms. "Uh… Ninjago to Zane? What the heck are you doing?" he blinked his widened brown eyes, somewhat disturbed.

The three looked up and saw the falcon copying the assassin's every motion. "Buddy, come on," Jay snapped the white ninja back.

"You should go… this bird fascinates me…" Zane tilted his head and the bird did the same. The other three were exchanging strange glances. Zane was odd, but… never this odd.

"Zane… come on…" Kai grabbed the white ninja by the arm and dragged him away from the falcon, Jay running faster than the others.

They pushed their way through the tall trees and came out in front of Jay's house. The barn doors were wide open and snakes were around the place. Jay was looking in horror because his parents were surrounded by the snakes.

"Mom! Dad!" Jay shouted.

The snakes turned around and the four ninja froze. "Aw way to go Jay… there goes making like a ninja…" Kai snapped at the other.

"Look! Lloyd!" Zane pointed to Lloyd who was off to the side.

"Uh oh…" Lloyd squeaked. "It isn't what it looks like!" The prince shouted, waving his hands around.

The guys shook their heads, "Sure kid…" Cole sighed, folding his arms. "I got the kid," he decided, looking back at the others with him.

The snakes slowly started gathering around the four and they held their weapons up in defense, ninja hoods thrown over their faces.

While Zane, Jay, and Kai fought the small group of red and white Serpentine, Cole made his way over to Lloyd who he grabbed by the wrist. "We're getting you out of here!"

Lloyd was tugging away grumpily at his defeat when everyone turned around. "What is this!?" It was Wu and Nya in the barn doorway.

"Uncle!" Lloyd shouted in terror. He knew how his uncle got when he was mad.

"Sensei! There are too many!" Kai's sword clashed with Fangtom's staff. "What are we gonna do?"

Jay made his way over to his parents; smacking Fangpyre with his gold nun chucks angrily. "Are you guys okay?" he frantically asked them.

"Those things bit us…" his father showed the puncture wounds. Jay swallowed because he noticed a snake like hiss to his mom and dad's voices.

"Guys! Their venom turns people into snakes!" the blue ninja looked scared. He looked back at the others, not wanting to leave his parents. "How do we reverse it!?"

"The anti-venom is in the staff!" Wu pointed to the leader battling Kai. The old man took out an even older wooden flute and started playing it.

The Serpentine hissed and writhed in pain which gave Kai his chance to seize the staff and flipped over to Jay and his parents. Jay quickly snatched the red bulb from the gold snake head staff and gave it to Ed and Edna to drink.

It did the trick because their skin which was turning to acid green scales reversed. Jay breathed, relieved. He never wanted to know how it felt to turn into a snake. He looked back to see the Serpentine slithering out as quickly as a possible.

One snake in particular snatched the leader's staff from the ninja on the way out, Fangtom, and he was leading Lloyd out with the minions.

"When you get back you are in so much trouble nephew!" Wu yelled at the prince who turned red like Fangtom's scales and continued to follow them.

"And here I thought he was a good kid…" Kai sighed, shaking his head and sat down on the ground, running a hand through his messy brown hair.

"He is…" Wu simply said. "But… you all know his problems… come…" he quickly started out.

"Thank you Jay," Edna hugged him. "Now go save that little sweetie, he doesn't know what he's gotten himself into!" she patted his cheek and kissed him. Jay heard the others laughing again.

The ninja followed Wu and Nya out of the small town and gathered around him. "So sensei… what is that flute?"

"This is an ancient flute that was passed down many generations and eventually to me… it is the only thing that can paralyze a Serpentine like what you just saw… now come!"

**Hmm... it must be short chapter update day...**

**Thank you kindly for reading :) **

**~Mar**


	6. Home

"This way!" Lloyd marched happily.

The Hypnobrai met them outside their tomb, ready for a fight, until Skales saw Fangtom and vice versa which made Lloyd hope for a vicious brawl to the death.

"Skales?" Fangtom grinned.

"Fangtom old chum!" Skales laughed.

They slithered up to each other and performed some sort of secret handshake. Lloyd was watching, very confused at what was happening.

"I never knew you were in charge now!" Fangtom laughed, delighted.

"Hold on!" Lloyd ran between the two, "I thought you said you hated each other!"

"Well if you perhaps released the Constrictai or Venomari… or HEAVEN FORBID the Anacondrai… then we would have had a tussle…" Skales folded his scaly arms and looked away from the child he hated so.

"A tussle? _A tussle!?_" Lloyd started becoming mad now. "I am Prince Lloyd Garmadon! Fight!"

"Well, now that Skales is in charge, I don't see why we can't be friends!" Fangtom grinned. The two shook hands.

"So what should we do about the brat?" Skales thumbed to Lloyd with his blue claws.

The young prince paled. It was time to go. As they were joking and laughing about what to do to him, he started backing away. He knew that once he got back home, he would surely be punished for what he had done. Not only did he release one tribe, but two! He would be grounded for life!

Now a good measure away from the Hypnobrai cave, Lloyd unfurled the map that he had taken from the Hypnobrai den and tilted his head. "Heaven forbid the Anacondrai, huh?" he chuckled, rolling it back up. "And that tomb is not too far from here!"

He started running off.

"Man what a heap of trouble we're in…" Kai held his hands over his face, unable to comprehend what just happened. "Serpentine!? Those blasted snakes that ancient authorities locked away!?"

"All because we couldn't play with him?" Nya sat beside Jay and Zane. "That boy is more trouble than he's worth…" she sighed, resting her head on the table.

"Yes well Lloyd is…" Zane trailed off. He started sniffing the air and frowned, looking back at the others, "Do any of you smell smoke?"

The five hurriedly stuck their heads out of the open windows to see the Serpentine running away from a plume of black smoke. An explosion went off and people were yelling and screaming to flee.

Kai, Nya, Jay, and Zane looked around and grabbed whatever they could and started running down the steps to run into Wu.

"Come!" Wu gestured and they ran out through the courtyard which seemed untouched. The dragons circled over head and they ran out.

"What the hell happened?!" Cole shouted, skidding to a halt as he met up with the others in the courtyard.

"Sir…" a guard came over. "We are containing the fire… what do you wish?"

"Hmm… I think… that as long as those snakes are out… we shouldn't stay here any longer…" Wu looked back at the black plume and stroked his long, white beard.

Everyone looked at him. "Sorry… what?" Jay blinked. "Where would we go!?"

"Anywhere but here… We need to be more mobile anyways if we wish to recapture the two tribes and get Lloyd back… now come…" he motioned.

The dragons landed and they got on, looking back at the dying smoke from the castle. "So… they attacked because they found out we lived here…" Kai muttered to himself.

"What do you mean?" Nya had over heard him. Kai jolted a little upon hearing her voice.

Kai looked back, "I mean… Lloyd must have been complaining about us not playing with him… then they made the connection we were ninja… and well…you saw what they did…"

Leading the way ahead, Zane was on Shard. The dragons were just over the edge of the forest which led to a long, hot desert land and then he saw it; the dark colored falcon. Zane looked back at the others and quickly steered away and down.

"Zane!" Jay called after him.

Everyone was shouting too when the white ninja was not listening anymore, so they followed him down. Zane was already off Shard by the time they landed and running off in a different direction.

"It's just a falcon Zane!" Cole yelled after him.

Zane was still not answering until they were clear of the last few landing the dragons, the other five fell in step quickly behind the white ninja and assassin. Then the three other ninja looked up at the falcon when Zane stopped.

The dark brown bird had perched itself high on a ship cabin. The ship was made of dark brown and red wood with gold painted window frames with broken glass windows. It looked run down and was buried in the sands of the desert edge amongst the rocks. It seemed to be a mystery as to how it got there.

"Whoa… look at this!" Jay ran forward more, running his bare hands along the chipped wood sides. He put his arms out, hugging the side of the ship. The auburn haired ninja looked back at everyone else. "Can we keep it!?" He asked with a grin and inspiration in his bright blue eyes.

"It would make a most interesting base camp," Nya looked at Wu with a hopeful smile. Deep down she wanted to keep it as much as Jay did. "I bet Jay and I can get it all fixed up!"

Their leader was quiet, deciding the decision. The others were practically on their knees with Jay and Nya, in agreement and waiting for their master's final word on the matter.

"Okay, you may fix this ship up and we shall use it as our base camp for finding Lloyd and stopping the Serpentine advances". Wu nodded and tapped his staff on the rock floor.

"Alright!" the guys cheered in excitement and climbed aboard to get started.

"If it was the Constrictai or Venomari… or _heaven forbid _the Anacondrai…" Lloyd muttered to himself with great annoyance as he looked up at the large, curved rock that was placed upon a sealed entrance.

He looked back; beyond some rocks he saw a bit of firelight and heard the laughter of the teenagers he called friends. They were searching for him and found that ship he passed on the way. They all had each other and his heart ached to have a family like what they had.

The prince always heard them say that they would be his family but he just didn't feel that close to them, even Zane when he thought about. Kai, Nya, Cole, and Jay all had wonderful parents they grew up with and siblings. Lloyd almost cried knowing he was raised without his mother and father.

He shook the thoughts from his head and looked back at his tattered map and nodded. He folded it back up and stuffed it in his pocket and with all his might, pushed the circular stone to the left of the entrance.

It finally rolled past and he peered inside the dark cave that was behind the rock. He quietly stepped inside and found an old torch on the floor. The young prince then found two rocks and scraped them against the other, trying to light a fire like he saw Zane do.

The torch lit up and he picked it up and started exploring the cave. The boy in green heard a low hissing sound and he turned around, startled. "Who… who's there!?" the boy demanded. "Where are you?"

"Why… what do we have here?" Lloyd's heart almost stopped as he peered into the dark and saw a pair of wide, magenta colored orbs with beady black pupils.

**Around the first half of this story was kind of hard for me to write XD I don't know why but it just was. Sometimes it's a little hard to get the ball rolling hehe. **

**Soooo you can only guess what will happen next... or well, along the lines of it because I've been doing some rearranging as you can see ;) **

**Thanks for reading! :D **

**~Mar**


	7. All the Wrong Friends

Lloyd fell back, torch going out and behind the pink eyes, a body materialized from the shadows. A violet snake with gold and black triangular markings and a pale blue crystal shape on his head and chest glimmered.

What scared Lloyd the most, wasn't the large fangs sticking out of his mouth, or his long, purple claws, it was the fact that the snake had a freakishly long neck that made him stand over six feet tall, making Lloyd feel even smaller than he already was.

"Well, look who we have here!" the snake chuckled not so pleasantly. Lloyd was looking behind the snake, awaiting this general's army to come out and seize him next. "Oh I am afraid I don't have any minions… not anymore… you see… they all… wasted away from hunger…" he gestured to the skeletons and bones lying around.

Lloyd looked down and saw the snake's stomach growl and started shaking. "I… I am Prince Lloyd Garmadon…" Lloyd swallowed. "Son… son of Lord Garmadon… and the future king of Ninjago…" he shakily said.

"Pythor P Chumsworth, at your service my little friend… thank you so much for releasing me! May I do anything to help you?" the snake, called Pythor, lowered his head to be face to face with Lloyd with a seemingly devious grin.

"I kind of have a snake problem…. With the Hypnobrai and Fangpyre… I released them and they don't respect me!" Lloyd pouted.

"Oh well, that is no way to treat a prince such as you!" Pythor patted the child on the head. He slithered around and saw Lloyd's map sticking out of his pocket. "Hmmm…" the snake pressed his lips together, "Tell you what dear child, how about I help you get back at those mean old tribes for treating you so poorly?"

"Like… a friend?" Lloyd looked up, hopefully.

"Don't tell me you never had a friend before!" Pythor decided to feed into the boy's obvious loneliness.

Lloyd bit his lip, "Well, I do have these five… they're all older though… and really busy… but that's because they're ninja…"

"Ninja?" Pythor quietly hissed with malice. "You have ninja friends?" He tried to sound interested and not annoyed.

"Well, yea, they're my friends…" Lloyd frowned. "I mean… they don't always play with me when I want to… and they're always training or doing something boring…"

"But doesn't that mean they are training to protect you?" Lloyd blinked. "Seems more like you'll never have normal friends though…" The prince swallowed. "Tell you what…" Pythor held his hand out. "I'll be your friend".

"Check this out!" Jay called Nya over. The black haired girl scooted up on the wooden floor next to the blue ninja. "Remember that steam power idea we had? I think we can use that to make this ship fly!"

Nya smiled at his excited grin, "I think that would be great!" Nya patted him on the back. "When can you have everything ready?"

"Give me a week, tops!"

"We don't have a week," Zane walked in with Cole. "Guess what we heard?" The boy in blue and the girl in red looked at the other, worried.

"Are you sure it was Lloyd?" Wu asked Kai. The ninja sighed, nodding.

"Blonde hair, green eyes? He was seen with a new kind of Serpentine, I think that's our boy…" Kai continued nodding with a frown. "The question is… where are they going?"

"I think we need to put a rush on that flying enabling thing Jay…" Nya looked over at the red brown haired teen that put his head down on the old wooden table they were gathered around.

"For now, use the dragons, split up and find my nephew," Wu looked sternly at the four young men. "Nya will get started on making this ship mobile…"

The four bowed and quickly ran off the ship and saddled up on their dragons. "So… I'll take the volcanic region… okay?" Kai sighed.

"I guess I'll take the mountain and desert…" Cole snapped his reigns to get Rocky moving.

"I'll take our home town…" Jay volunteered.

"And that leaves me with the Imperial City and the snow terrain around it," Zane nodded.

"How are we gonna signal each other though?" Jay looked around, reminding everyone before they left.

Cole thought it over for a moment and looked up, "When you find Lloyd, have your dragon shoot up a signal".

The four split up and left Nya and Wu on the ship. The young maiden with the black hair looked at her tools and bit her lip. She was itching to grab her steam power mech she was working on back at the palace and take it out for a spin and go masquerading as her persona yet again.

She looked at her tool box and then smiled, "You're highness?" Nya loudly said.

"What is it Nya?" he called back.

"Sir, I need to go back to the palace and grab my other tools! Sadly, I left some behind!"

"Whatever you need to do to get us moving," he approved, not really paying attention because he was reading over several scrolls.

Nya jumped over the side of the ship, landing in a roll and darted off through the forest that opened up to the Imperial City, shaking sand from her raven black hair.

Lloyd had a happy grin on his face as he looked over the side of the top of the tower. It was an old condemned building that Lloyd and Pythor were hiding out in, attracting the Hypnobrai and Fangpyre in a trap.

They were up high on a hill overlooking the valley village where he met Kai, Cole, Nya, and Jay. Lloyd did enjoy Pythor being around, he was someone who paid attention and listened, unlike several colorful friends back home.

The young prince looked up when he heard it; the roar of a dragon. He quickly looked around and then he saw it; Jay and Wisp circling the valley like a vulture for him.

"Ah! They're coming!" Lloyd shouted and ran inside. "They're gonna lock me up for good this time…" the boy in green muttered to himself, because he knew they all would be terribly mad at him for all of this trouble.

Jay narrowed his eyes and then lowered his goggles so he could see better, he swore he heard Lloyd's shout nearby. He guided Wisp more to the old building in which Lloyd _was _hiding out in.

Closer in, he saw a purple Serpentine slither out, see Jay, and headed back inside. Then he saw a little blonde troublemaker stick his head out and jump back in.

"Yea that's him…" Jay sighed. "Okay Wisp, shoot up a signal for the others… make it nice, big, and bright!" he patted his blue monster's neck.

**Wooo, more updates! I should be doing more frequent ones because I don't wanna run anymore than three MAYBE four at a time... good thing Frozane is almost done... anyways... oh yea I have an instagram/webstagram I'm lady_garmadon on there... **

**Anyways thanks for reading! :D **

**~Mar**


	8. Playtime

Nya slipped into her secret room yet again and found everything she was looking for. She opened up the small mech and strapped herself in, then opened the back way entrance and pulled a rope.

The mech rattled and she could feel the metal warming up as the water turned into steam power for her to use.

Then she jerked when she heard a guard, "Who's there?" she shut the machine off and put her back against the wall, next to the door of her lair entrance. She cursed under breath and heard the guard return upstairs when no one answered to her relief.

She sighed and looked at her creation, "Maybe a few more tweaks?" she grabbed her wrench and put her goggles back on, ready to do whatever was needed. Maybe testing this thing would have to wait a while.

After washing her oily hands off in the water barrel she grabbed her red clothing and decided that she would go in her old fashion way, with just a sword and mask. She also pocketed her few tools she did really need for the ship and started plotting which place she would knock over this time.

All four dragons were gathered together in the air and they all landed together and, armed with their weapons of gold, entered the old building.

"Now shh," Cole hushed, "We never know what kind of traps there are…"

They climbed the creaky, rotting stairs and then, they saw Lloyd's shadow run into the next room. "You know, maybe the kid just wants to play…" Jay sympathetically thought, "I know if I was him I'd just want that…"

"And maybe we can have a tea party with cookies and scones while we're at it…" Kai snapped back in a sarcastic whisper.

"Not what I meant!" Jay hissed.

"Can we please save this for later?" Zane quietly and patiently asked. He took two more steps and the floor abruptly gave out. "AH!"

"ZANE!" The others yelled in unison, looking into the open hole in the floor as quickly as possible.

The white ninja was hanging on, shurakins still in hands, onto the cracking rafter on the ceiling of the bottom floor. "I'm alright!"

"Haha, BOOBY TRAP!" They heard Lloyd silly giggles.

The other three looked up and all narrowed their eyes, seeing Lloyd shrink back and started running. "Okay that's it!" Kai's gold sword ignited with frustration plastered on his face. "I am tired of hunting you down Lloyd!"

"Watch out! This place can light up in seconds!" Cole stopped the fire ninja. Kai growled and sheathed it, not wanting to get the others hurt.

Zane climbed back up with ease and started ahead, "I will handle Lloyd! Work on the Serpentine!" the white ninja took out his shurakins again and spun them, frost collecting around the sharp edges. "Lloyd, let's go…"

"No way! Not now! You guys are gonna kill me!" Lloyd shouted he was at the end of the old balcony. "Come on… Pythor?"

He looked behind him and saw the large Serpentine pulling the map out of the prince's pocket and starting to vanish again.

"Hey! I thought we were friends!" the blonde boy shouted in anger.

"Ha friends!" the other laughed, "please, in your mind, we would be your slaves!" Pythor hissed.

The other three ninja got outside and were standing around, Zane as well, all looking quite angry. Lloyd gulped, not knowing what would happen next.

Nya climbed back on board without Wu knowing and she quickly went to work like she should have done over two hours ago.

She was stopped once again by four dragon roars and she ran outside again with Wu to see the four had returned, and on Flame with Kai, a very guilty little prince in front.

After they slid off, Kai was holding the small boy over his shoulder, looking very angry. "So what should we do with him boys?" he looked back at the others, ignoring the child kicking and whining.

"I vote that we take away all his sweets and candy!" Jay chuckled. "And eat it ourselves!" he laughed in a mock evil tone.

"Aw no! Come on! All I wanted was someone to play with!" Lloyd kicked and pounded Kai's back over his shoulder.

The other three looked at him, not taking him seriously, "So you released ancient monsters to play with you!?" Cole started laughing.

"Hey! It was a good idea… at… the time…" Lloyd trailed off. "Okay maybe it wasn't such a smart idea! I'm a desperate kid!"

"Guys, I get first crack at him, hehe," Kai dropped the prince on the deck of the ship. He landed hard on his butt and rubbed his lower back.

Wu narrowed his eyes at the four students, "there will be no first cracks!" he shouted at them. "Now… come on Lloyd…" he dragged his nephew away into the rooms on the ship.

The five young men and woman looked at each other, confused at was to happen to Lloyd for his punishment. It was starting to get dark so about a half an hour later, they headed inside and stuck their heads into Lloyd's room.

"And that's why the bunny never trusted a snake". They overheard.

"Story time?" Jay blinked. "We had to round this kid up and he gets a story time?" he hiss in annoyance.

"Shh," Nya hushed.

Lloyd yawned, "You know… if my dad told me that story… I never would have done that…" they listened in.

"If your father _was _here… he would have… trust me Lloyd, he would have…"

Wu walked out and saw the five standing around the entrance to the room. "Well? Why are you all standing around?"

"Uh… he did all these bad things, and all he got was a story time?" Cole looked at the others in agreement with him.

"… boys… and Nya…" he addressed them slowly, "Do you understand what this boy has gone through?" he looked around at all of them. They all awkwardly looked at one another, because, they didn't really come to think of it.

Their sensei sighed, "All you must know is… that he was very young when his father left… less than a year later, his mother left…" he looked at them. "The last thing that boy needs is to be left alone… I now see that maybe having everyone simply brushing him aside is the last thing he needed the other day despite the things we were busy with".

The ninja looked guilty, "…Sensei?" Kai asked. "How did… Garmadon become… whatever that was in the Underworld?"

Everyone else looked up expectantly for an explanation. Wu sighed, "Not tonight… I am tired… you all should ready for rest as well…" he brushed them off and returned to his own quarters for the night.

**I did say I'd try and update stuff sooner right? Anyways, this story is twenty eight chaps X.X So... I hope you guys enjoyed this update :)**

**Oh! And make sure to vote on my newest poll! :D **

**Thanks for reading! **

**~Mar**


	9. Change

The vultures of the desert squawked as the hot sun rose in the purpling sky and the ninja groggily pulled the old blankets over their heads, not wanting to get up at all. Kai poked his head from under the covers to the old bunk on top of his bed. "Guys…?" he yawned. "Where the heck is Jay?"

Cole and Zane peeked from their blankets, "I heard him get up sometimes around midnight…" Zane wiped an eye.

"Is that what all those hammer noises were?" Cole flipped his pillow over. It smelt like moth balls and dust. Two smells he could never stand.

"Hey guys!" Nya called everyone else. "Check this out! Jay and I fixed the kinks!"

Everyone grumpily got up and trudged out to the deck of their landlocked ship. Nya and Jay grinned at each other and pulled a pair of levers on the deck.

The ship jerked back and forth, and everyone grabbed hold of something, they were still dizzy from sleep. They heard the sound of steam erupting and they saw the ship lift off the ground.

"This is awesome!" Lloyd ran to the side of the ship to see that they were flying, just like the dragons.

The ship stopped it's rocking and stayed in the air, much to everyone's relief. They all took a look for themselves over the side of the now flying ship in awe.

"Wonderful job you two…" Wu praised Nya and Jay who blushed. "Now… ninja…" he looked at the four older boys. "I suggest you have breakfast and start your training for today".

"Yes sensei," they bowed and walked off to do as they were told.

"Nya, please start gathering information on Serpentine locations… the snake… Pythor… I have a feeling that he will be trying to unite the other clans…"

"Other clans?" Nya and Lloyd blinked.

"There were five clans… it seems that Pythor is the last of his own, and nonetheless he will try to make himself king over the others".

"I'm all over it your highness!" Nya saluted and ran off.

"How about me?" Lloyd hopped, looking for something to do. He felt really bad about causing so much trouble and offered his uncle his help.

"You will sit and behave like a good boy," Wu patted the boy on his head gently and walked past him.

Lloyd sighed. At least back in the castle there were more people to pester and places to run and hide and at least he could eat whenever he wanted. He went into his room and brought his knees to his chest. He wanted to see his dad again and he thought back to that incredibly real dream he had the night before meeting his father, about his mother.

_His mom_… Lloyd flopped back on the bed, wiping his face with frustration and a small groan; wondering who she really was and what she was doing because it been more than seven years since he was with her.

Misako slung the sword around, hearing the blades 'shing' as it sliced the air. She brought the blade up and turned it so the blade was sideways, facing her. She brought it down and sheathed it with a loud breath.

She often wondered why she kept a sword with her, she didn't really needed it. She hid away so well it's not like bandits would raid her stuff. She had nothing anyone wanted. She quickly found when she left home, when she wasn't reading she was slinging it around at nothing and vice versa. She remembered a little conversation between her and her father when she was young.

_"Ladies shouldn't fight Misako. I don't like that you hang around with those boys, running wild and barefoot. You should be inside studying and learning to act properly". He watched his childish daughter dressed in green with no shoes and her styled hair fallen in a simple braid as she ignored what he was saying._

_"Father, I hate doing all of that… being with the boys is just so much more fun!" the fourteen year old spun around the room with laughter. _

_"No, Spinjitsu is for ninja, and ninja are men. I wish that Garmadon would stop trying to corrupt you!" his eyes followed her as she danced around the room like a little child, pretending she mastered Spinjitsu. "I let you have your fun with them but I am a member of the royal court and you reflect my job as a father and a member"._

_Misako stopped and turned, folding her arms, "But what happens if there's a war?" she tilted her head. "Even ladies should know how to fight!" she piped. _

_"No, you sit in your home and wait for the men to return!" Her father loudly said, looking down at her folded arms and defiant face._

_"Misako! Come on! Check out my new sword!" she turned and saw Garmadon's head poke in with a crooked smile. She giggled and skipped out the door. "My father had one made for you too!" _

And she remembered the crest on the hilt. They weren't even more than friends at the time she received the sword she would grow into.

Those times seemed like a lifetime ago and it literally hurt to remember it. She looked at the hilt again and sighed. She hated a fight but as she studied and read in her eight years of seclusion she knew she'd need it more than ever soon. Her fingers traced the gold lotus flower crest of the royal family. _Her _family.

Being alone was starting to get to her, especially since the encounter she had with her husband. She walked outside and sat on the rocks in the sun overhead, taking her shoes off. She blinked and looked down, off her mountain then took off her glasses and wiped them on her tunic and placed them back on.

"Oh no…" she stood to her feet. She went back inside and unraveled a scroll she kept away from quite some time. "Serpentine…" she muttered, shaking her head. "Time is drawing closer…" she bit her lip. "Sign one…" she swallowed. "The King of Shadows will escape and the four brought together… "Two, the ancient snakes will come back…"

She rolled it up not wanting to look anymore at it. "I can't interfere… nothing I do now can help them…" She sat on the rock floor, "Oh Wu, if only you would have believed me…"

Wu looked at his own scrolls in his chambers. He practically jumped when he heard his ninja come in.

"What's that sensei?" Kai looked at the scroll laid out. The others couldn't read the language it was written in.

"This is a prophecy about a ninja rising above the others… becoming the legendary green ninja that will save the world… from the dark lord…" He said, still looking it over, placing a hand on the green figure in the center.

"Lord Garmadon?" they asked together.

Wu nodded and turned back around, folding the scroll up, putting it away in a chest, "And you should not have seen it…" he sternly said. "Now before you leave, here," he handed them folded clothes.

"New ninja suits?" They looked at each other.

"Yes, and… those weapons you carry… there is a deeper power that you can unlock," he looked at each one of them. "Unlock your true potentials… and you will be stronger… and then you can stop the Serpentine".

The ninja excitedly ran outside. Wu sat back down and rubbed his eyes, remembering Misako's words to him. _"My son will be the green ninja Wu… it's impossible for it not be…"_ he was starting to wonder if what she said was right.

When the four boys ran out they looked up, seeing the dragons taking off. "HEY!" Cole shouted to them.

"They are leaving…" Zane frowned. "When dragons become adults they must migrate and shed… they must go through changes, same as us…"

"Well that is just great!" Jay yelled sarcastically. "See ya later you ditchers!" he shouted to the four beasts flying away. He saw Wisp look back, looking sad. Jay slumped his shoulders and frowned too. "I'm sorry! I'll miss you too buddy!"

"What now?" Kai sighed, looking at their new suits.

"Well I guess that our true potentials will make up for no dragons right now…" Zane shrugged.

Pythor slithered through the puzzled guards as he entered the home of the Hypnobrai. There was a slither pit going on between them and the Fangpyre for fun.

As soon as he entered the icy den everyone stopped and turned to stare at the new Serpentine before them, "Hello old chums!" he laughed, voice echoing in the freezing, ice caves.

"YOU!" Skales pointed at him from his throne seat. He got up with Fangtom and slithered over to Pythor, ready to throw him out of their gathering.

"You, are not welcome here!" Fangtom's two heads hissed at the Anacondrai.

"Come now… I think we can all work together…" Pythor chuckled. "And I have the perfect plan… of course… it'd require releasing the other two clans… but we get to take down the humans," he smirked.

The other two leaders looked at each other and back at Pythor. Their snake eyes narrowed but they extended their hands for the purple snake to shake.

The deal was set, now it was time to move ahead and roll out the perfect plan he devised since long ago when he was locked up.

**Thanks for reading! :D **

**~Mar**


	10. Golden Creatures

Nya, cloaked in red, laid low on the rooftop where she hid, no need for anyone to see her. She was about to run something of interest caught her ear.

"Did you hear!? More Serpentine were seen earlier!" a woman was loudly saying.

Nya peeked over the edge of the roof, intrigued. "First I get nasty little thieves like the Red Mask and now the slimy snakes!" a man was complaining. "She stole from me_ again _not an hour ago!"

"In all fairness you did cheat that boy out of all his money you idiot!" the woman snapped back."It's like you ask for her to show up at your door and rob you blind!" The woman smacked the man in the back of the head. Nya giggled and decided to change into her regular clothes and head back.

She climbed down the tall, white and gray stone houses and finished pulling her red skirt with the white flower pattern up around her waist. She started off when something caught her eye. On the sides of the buildings were plastered wanted posters… bearing her masked profile.

"Well… I guess I'm worth five hundred gold pieces," she laughed. "Oh please… I bet I can get the bounty higher". She laughed. She shook her head though because that was such a silly idea. Nah, she'd get the bounty down, since there was Serpentine to spare, maybe she could catch a few and become a hero to everyone.

She bit her lip in a smile and decided to run out of town and to where the ship was parked. She hopped over the side and threw her bag in her room, and shook the sand that was carried by the wind out of her hair and walked into the dining room.

The boys were around the table having dinner. Kai looked up as she walked around table to her empty cushion. "And where have you been?" her impatient brother asked.

"In town buying some supplies… we have a Serpentine hunt to go on," she reminded everyone. She plopped the satchel in front of Kai's plate.

"Yea… if it wasn't for me getting bored and releasing the first three tombs, none of this wouldn't have happened…" Lloyd leaned his face on his hands and groaned loudly.

"The past is past…" Wu looked at his young nephew who was on the left side of the table next to Zane. "Now we must deal with our problem and look to the future".

Nya sighed, "And another thing… I think Pythor is releasing the other two tribes… I overheard two people in town talking about it". She shook her head.

"Then let's go!" Cole stood up.

"We don't even know where the other two tombs are!" Jay piped, wanting to finish eating first anyways and then looked at Lloyd. "Lloyd lost the map!" He pointed accusingly at the young boy whose head fell to the hard table when it slipped between his small hands.

"I thought about that one too," Nya smiled. She opened a map on the other end of the table. Everyone looked over it; it was a plain old map of Ninjago.

She smiled and took out a brush and a jar of ink, and stroke three x's in the three spots that Lloyd found the first three tombs. "So these places are where Lloyd found the three tombs…" she started drawing a large serpent shape around the entire map. "And I realized that they line up with our symbol for "serpent"".

Everyone was looking at the other bends in the serpent image's shape; there were two more bends that placed them over the Mountain of a Million Steps and the Toxic Bogs. "So the last two places must be here… and here," Zane pointed to the last areas.

"Exactly," Nya nodded, standing upright and folding her arms, proudly.

"Then Cole and Zane, you should go to the mountain, and Kai and Jay will take the bogs," Wu stood up and clapped his hands twice. "Step to it… and maybe you will be able to unlock your weapon's potentials…"

As the four were shooed out, they looked back at Wu, confused but their sensei said nothing more so they jumped off their ship and were off.

Nya looked at the boys and then at sensei, "Uh, what about me?" she politely asked.

"Yea! What are we gonna do!?" Lloyd hopped.

"I am going out… Nya, you will watch Lloyd," Wu looked at the young woman who frowned, looking at the prince.

"Woohoo!" Lloyd hugged Nya.

"Yes sensei…" she sighed and tried walking with Lloyd trailing behind her like a shadow. She liked Lloyd but she hated playing nanny. She was mechanic and blacksmith!

The two pairs of ninja split and ran in the opposite directions of the other. Has they ran Jay took out his nun chucks and frowned. "Hey Kai?"

"What?" Kai was just trying to stay focused on keep a quick pace. His legs were working had to pull his legs as they sank in the sand dunes.

"What do you suppose these weapons can really do?" he looked at his twisted reflection in the handles, slowing down his pace a little.

Kai stopped to and looked back, taking out his golden sword. "I don't know Jay…" he frowned. "I hope we figure out soon because, I'll so be the first to find my true potential and become the green ninja!" he proudly laughed.

"Suuure," Jay slowly said, sounding sarcastic. "It should be someone smart!" the blue ninja rolled his eyes. The two started walking again, "I still wonder what this thing can really do though…" Jay started spinning his nun chucks quickly around.

The electricity that sparked when spinning around the chain seemed to glow a brighter and brighter blue that made Kai cover his eyes from the light. "Jay! Stop screwing around you idiot!" he shouted at the other ninja.

"I think something's happening!" Jay shouted over the winding sound the weapon was making.

In a brilliant white light that erupted from the small weapon, and in place of the weapon that was magically pulled from Jay's hand was something like a blue horse with wings and silver adornments the two blinked, not believing what just happened.

"Great… these things are horses?!" Kai looked at his sword carefully. "How did you do that!?" he pointed to the blue horse.

"That is a Pegasus and I don't know!" Jay shouted back. "Let's try the same with yours!" Jay jumped, feeling excited.

Kai gingerly looked at the ancient blade in his hands and ignited it. "So… what is there like… a magic word or something?" he swung it a couple times. "Hocus pocus!" he shouted.

"And you call me stupid…" Jay muttered.

Kai started shaking the blade, "Come on! Work!" he sighed. Then, the same sort of thing that happened to the nun chucks, only in red, happened.

"So… we get… horses?" Kai sighed. "I was hoping for another dragon!" Kai was starting to whine. His creature looked like Flame only in a horse shape.

"Okay, mine is a _Pegasus,_" Jay restated, pointed to the wings, "That is a fire demon horse" the blue ninja gestured to Kai's, "and we'll need something to use for split up missions so I'm gonna take this chance!" Jay hopped on. "I shall call you: Thunder Whip!" Jay proudly proclaimed, putting his fist in the air, trying to look epic on the Pegasus' back.

Thunder Whip stretched his wings out as well and held his head up high when Jay made the motion. Kai thought they were a pair of morons.

"What a stupid name!" Kai slowly said, staring at Jay.

Thunder Whip jerked his head down and glared at Kai along with Jay. "Oh yea?! What are you gonna name _yours_!?" Jay growled.

"Easy, Rug Burn, because I hate them," Kai folded his arms, smirking.

The horse blew ashes out of his nose and glared back at Kai with angry, gold eyes as well. He lifted his right, back leg and kicked Kai in the gut, making him fall into the sand, hardly able to breathe.

"I like him already," Jay grinned as he laughed. Kai was still in the sand, trying to get up as Rug Burn started laughter like neighing.

Kai dragged himself on the red horse and Jay started off. One thing he noticed was that Thunder was faster and could fly and poor Kai was stuck on the ground with his plain horse.

"You are so stupid! Can you do anything!?" Kai complained. The horse glared back again, very angrily, and snorted his nostrils and fire came out. Kai looked stunned. "Never mind; that will be useful…"

"To the Toxic Bogs!" Jay laughed from the air. "Last one there is a rotten dragon egg!" The lightning ninja and gold creature companion zoomed off.

"NO FAIR!" Kai shouted up as Rug Burn picked up speed.

"I was not made for heat…" Zane took off his white hood as he and Cole trudged through the hot sand. Being the ice ninja, he was more comfortable in colder climates.

Cole looked at the other with great annoyance, "At least you have white! I got a black ninja suit! Do you know how it is under here?" Cole threw his hood off too revealed his sweaty face. His thick, black hair was wet as well and sticking up in odd directions.

"Now you look like Kai," Zane laughed, pointing out the other's hair.

Cole laughed too, "Yea but I wouldn't want to be that hot head," he looked down at his feet going silent, "Hey Zane?" he looked over. "You know sensei the longest, you know him better, what did mean by unlocking our weapons and true potential and all that garbage?"

"I don't know either… I just hope we make it to the mountain before next week…" the white ninja sighed, looking at his boots making faint prints in the hot sand.

"It looks like we haven't even moved," Cole hung his head. "Why did I sign up to be a ninja? Why couldn't it be some other poor sap!? Dragons and prophecies and super powers… I miss my old life…"

"A life where your father snapped at you for everything and your sister ragged on you?" Zane blinked.

Cole was about to confirm when he stopped himself, "Okay I see your point maybe this _is _better… but not right now…" Then he thought of something, "Hey, you have ice powers," he remembered.

Zane looked at his shurakins, "I guess so… but you want me to create a blizzard in a desert? That probably will not go over well…"

"Come on… spin those things and at least create a cool breeze, I am begging you," Cole finally sat on his knees, not moving another step until he cooled down.

Zane sighed, "Oh fine if it will mean we can move forward…" Zane shook his head. He started spinning the golden weapons when they spun out of control and started glowing.

Cole looked up, his dark gray eyes widening. "What did you do?" he started backing away, still on the ground. Zane shrugged looking just as freaked out as the earth ninja. When the light was gone and in its place was, "… is that pony?" Cole looked in disbelief.

"Uh, judging by its horn… I think that is a unicorn Cole…" Zane politely corrected the older ninja.

"Great!" Cole wiped his eyes, "Now I'm seeing mirages!" he fell back wards in the sand that was sticking to his wet hair, neck, and face. "Just when I thought dragons were the only magical creatures… then came Serpentine, and now… a pair of shurakins that can turn into a pony with a chisel in its head…"

"Cole… maybe you should drink some the water we packed…" Zane bit his lip, staring down at the earth ninja who was being over dramatic.

Cole folded his arms over his face, "What's the point!? I'm gonna die out here while you and sterling white over there ride away to pony land!"

"Cole, we're less than a mile from the ship…" Zane frowned. Cole continued to whine and ignore him though.

Now Cole was being delusional… Zane was slowly backing away a couple of steps. "Now, come Cole, you are acting like a… what would Kai or Jay say…?" he thought, "Like an overdramatic child?"

"Okay; no one would ever say that," Cole lifted his head from the ground and plopped it back into the sand.

"Will you just get up?" Zane asked, shouting. Cole continued his whining when Zane looked underneath him where he kept his scythe hooked. "Cole… Cole? I think… your scythe… it's… Cole, it's glowing…" he tried to talk over the other.

"What do you mean it's glowing?" Cole quickly sat up, sand flying everywhere, like nothing was wrong with him.

"I mean… just look at it…" Zane pointed.

Like Zane's shurakins, Cole's scythe of gold was glowing. The earth ninja dropped it as it glowed white and backed away with Zane. Out of the flash of light was a gryphon. Cole's mouth dropped wide.

"Two mirages… I'm done… just leave me and save yourself!" Cole cried, hugging Zane around the knees.

"Um… Cole… it's real…" Zane quietly said as he was being shaken. "Look".

Cole let go and walked over to the mythical creature. "Listen Zane, I think I know a mirage when I see one!" He put his hand out, still looking at the white ninja. "And I can say that this is a miraah-" Cole abruptly stopped when he felt his hand stop. His voice was caught on "aah" for a few more seconds.

He looked back and pressed his hand harder against the gryphon's face and it snapped back with a squawk, making Cole jump with a squeal, jerking his hand back protectively. "It's real!" he screamed with terror.

"I tried telling you that," Zane politely said, petting his own creature. The unicorn seemed rather tame compared to Cole's black, loud mouth griffin. "I'll call you frost," Zane smiled and stroked the nose.

Cole sat on the ground in front of the mythical beast that lowered its head, nudging him with his beak. "Dragons were enough for me to handle…" he sighed when he kept feeling the nudge against his shoulder. "Fine you're name is Squawky… you like that?"

"What, no Pebbles?" Zane asked.

"Rocky would have his feelings hurt…" Cole stood up, brushing his black ninja suit off. "So how does this work now? We get golden weapon creatures? The dragons will be jealous when they come back…" he walked around the side. "So I mount and you… what you can fly or something?"

Squawky proud stood, claws apart and Cole sat on the silver saddle already on his back. "Don't be too slow now…" Zane was on his own creature.

**This... right here... some of my best comedic writing... sad right? XD But I did enjoy coming up with the idea of the creatures and what they would be :) I wanted Kai to be a jerk about it, Jay to be a dork about his, Zane to be completely calm and happy, and Cole to be the big freak out...**

**So... yay back to back updates! :D I'll try and do the Frozane one... if I can... the next one of that is REALLY short... lots of in between Pixa/Jay/Zane/Nya cuts... **

**So thank you for reading! :D **

**~Mar**


	11. Two Tombs

"Man this place stinks," Jay slid off Thunder Whip and held his nose, batting the thick green fog that infested the place.

"Worse than Cole's cooking…" Kai was still on Rug Burn. Finally the red horse bucked him off and he fell off the back, landing on his tailbone. "Oooooow". Kai was biting the side of his mouth to keep from crying.

Jay and the horses laughed at him. Finally Jay stopped at looked at the blue and silver Pegasus. "So how does this work? Do you turn into nun chucks again or…?"

On command the Pegasus turned back into Jay's beloved gold nun chucks and the ninja hooked them back on. Jay looked politely to Rug Burn who stomped a hoof and turned back into a sword. It fell on the ground and Kai wobbled up and a grabbed it, putting it in his back sheath again.

"Come on Kai!" Jay started jumping along the twisted, hard; over grown roots that over lapped the other. Kai waddled like a duck because of the pain of being bucked off, trying to move faster. Jay then grabbed some of the sickly green vines and started swinging across now and Kai finally made it to the top of his first root.

Minutes passed and Kai was able to stand straight again. "We should be almost there…" the red ninja shouted to Jay was still ahead of him. They were quite careful to not fall into the acid bubbling swamps below them. One touch and their flesh could melt right off their bones, an experience neither wanted to know.

Cole and Zane reached the top of the steps of the mountain and their creatures returned to their normal, weapon state. The two ninja looked into the dark cave entrance that lead straight down. Zane took out a long, coiled up rope and tried it to a rock, throwing it down the deep hole.

Cole slid down it first and lit a torch. The two were looking around and saw cave drawings on the walls. Cole smirked, "Didn't momma snake ever teach em to not draw on the walls?" he joked more to himself.

"It seems that Pythor has beaten us here…" Zane sighed seeing the place was empty. "Come on, let us go back up and report to sensei".

"Yea okay…" Cole trailed off and jumped. "Did you feel that?"

"What are you talking about?" Zane blinked, looking back at the earth ninja.

"That!" The black ninja jumped again.

The two were back to back, looking at the ground. It looked like something was circling them underground. In front of Cole, an enormous, muscular, black and orange Serpentine leapt for the ground beneath their feet.

Cole retracted and brought his gold scythe up in defense. "Names Skalidor," he growled with a grin. He knocked Cole back and wrapped his thick tail around Zane, constricting him. "Leader of the Constrictai… Pythor sends his regards".

Zane was finding it harder and harder to breathe and respond, "You stay behind just to tell us that? Pathetic." The white ninja tried to move his neck around but the end of the tail was around the top of his head, minimizing movement.

"Look who's pathetic, you're all wrapped up!" Skalidor laughed at his own pun.

He was too occupied to pay attention to the black ninja who was now coming from behind. Zane looked behind at his friend, causing the Serpentine to look back as well. He caught Cole in mid aid, by the throat.

"The flute!" Zane yelled; muscles straining as he tried to push his arms out to break free from the strong tail.

Cole choked and brought the flute that Wu had given him from the other day to use, to his mouth. He sucked in as much air as possible as he badly played it; legs dangled in the air.

Though it was a little off key, it did the trick; Skalidor let go of both to plug his ear holes and retreated into the ground. "Come on!" Zane grabbed Cole by the arm and started climbing the rope to get out.

"If he was expecting us, then Kai and Jay must be in trouble!" Cole swallowed as they hoisted their bodies up as quickly as possible. "We'll have to go help them!"

The girl in her red disguise darted through the corridors of the castle. Most of the guards and servants were too occupied with rebuilding the wall to notice her running around, which she was thankful for.

Not an hour ago she overheard a small group of snakes in the woods talking about an ambush at the Toxic Bogs. Knowing her brother and Jay went there to look for the Venomari, she had to get there as fast as possible.

Nya quickly raced into her underground cave where her mech was kept. "Time for a test run!" she hooked herself in after tying her red mask on. "Time for the Red Mask to become a real hero!" she smirked and powered her rattling machine up.

Kai and Jay found the old Venomari tomb entrance and poked in. The fire ninja sighed, "Oh man, looks like Pythor beat us to everything…"

_Thing, thing, thing…_

"Haha cool, echoes," Jay laughed and looked in more. "You say you're the green ninja, well I say, I am!" he shouted into it.

_I am, I am, I am…_

Jay was laughing like an idiot while Kai scowled at his stupidity and decided to look around the small area. He looked in disgust at the green slime and venom that made the bogs up. He heard a croaking sound and jumped.

A small, green and red spotted frog with snake like eyes hopped out and blinked up at him. Kai breathed and lowered his sword his took out on reflex. "Oh man… sorry little guy," he laughed as the frog hopped past him. "If I wasn't such a good ninja I-"

He turned around and stopped when he saw three green Serpentine coming out of the toxic acid water. "Uh oh…" Kai swallowed. The three creatures spit green venom that got into Kai's eyes. He let out a wail.

"Kai?" Jay's head snapped up. "Kai!?" he ran around the corner seeing the Venomari around him. Kai was huddling against rocks.

"They're everywhere! Elves and gingerbread men! EVERYWHERE!" he covered his face and screamed in terror.

Jay blinked for a moment then grabbed his nun chucks. "Uh… okay I don't know what you're seeing but I need you with me on this partner…" Jay was ready to attack, glancing back at the crazy red ninja.

"But… I never fought little people before! We're done for!" Kai cried. Jay then noticed his brown eyes glowed a sick green color.

Right when Jay went to charge forward he heard the neigh of a horse an eagle's squawk. He jumped around and saw Zane and Cole ride in and drop down, catching their weapons.

"Anyone order a little kick butt?" Cole shouted.

_Butt, butt, butt_

The tomb echoed the last word and Jay laughed out loud though no one else did. Cole just sighed and stood ready. "Okay guys, let's take em down…" he surveyed the enemies before them.

From behind, Pythor slithered out and Cole whipped out the flute again. He started playing it when it was wrenched from his hands by Pythor's long, violet and black tail.

"Come now boys, let's not let music ruin things," he deeply chuckled and looked at the flute with hate in his pink eyes.

The four were backed up against the acid lake and their only move could be to jump on the floating log hovering above the acid lake.

Once on, it started floating back and they were stuck with nowhere else to go. "Now what?" Jay nervously looked over at the others.

"Hey guys! Look!" Kai deliriously said. "It's a magic rope! Let's climb to safety!" he started walking off the log when Cole and Jay caught him.

"Wow that Venomari venom must be some powerful stuff!" Jay looked over at the delirious red ninja with an open mouth.

Out of what seemed to be nowhere, knocking through the large trees was rickety mech with a driver hook in. Jay narrowed his eyes and gasped. "The Red Mask…" he breathed dreamily, seeing the controller of the mech suit.

"Santa!?" Kai said dizzily. Everyone looked at him again, un-amused.

The Serpentine started occupying themselves with fighting the Red Mask while the four boys just sat on their quickly deteriorating log.

"Retreat!" Pythor yelled as the snakes started running away just as he felt something give a shallow gash in his shoulder. He looked back and grimaced at Nya who threw a dagger at him.

The Red Mask, or well, Nya, helped the ninja off their log. She got out of her mech and through her hood back up with a grin.

"Wow… thanks so much," Jay jumped back and forth on his feet repeatedly, excited.

Nya sighed and raised a strange device. "Sorry guys". She whispered. The four looked at each other and Nya fired it off. It was some form of knock out gas and the ninja immediately passed out and Nya fled with her mech.

When the four boys woke up they found their sensei standing over them.

**Lol this one is not even halfway done XP **

**This one is obviously based off of Can of Worms, which is my personal favorite episode... you can only imagine my joy and excitement in writing this one XD**

**Thanks for reading! **

**~Mar**


	12. The Serpentine King

**Before we begin; guest: WafflestheNinja? **

**Yea, I was gonna wait till the last episodes aired on TV instead of watching the crappy quality vids on YouTube like a few other fans... so ****_thank you ever so much_**** for spoiling that ending for me... I really loved hearing what happens in the final episode! ):I**

**Next time you should ask about if I heard about what happened or not before you go on and blurt out complete spoilers... I would get excited when I was younger about stuff that would happen on Star Wars or something but I never bluntly said what happened... **

**Try and remember that next time you want to spoil something, because I do not appreciate those comments AT ALL. You are reviewing my story so review my story and don't put these comments related to the show and not about what I wrote because I am not a happy person right now. If I wanted to know what happened I would have known, trust me.**

**I half expected what you said happened, but still I did not want to know for sure! **

**Didn't mean to make it that long but you all know now and have no excuse. *puts on River song voice***** SPOILERS! *******

**With that said, go on and read this silly chapter **

* * *

Around the table the seven sat. Kai was still hyped up on venom and the others were going on about the Red Mask's mech machine. Some things they found awesome, and the rest was complaining about knocking them out.

"It was a hundred feet tall with weapons coming out of everywhere!" Kai was standing up, not even looking at the others with his glowing, green eyes. His arms were jerkily moving in big motions, almost hitting Nya and Jay at his sides. He then stopped abruptly. "Guys… look at sensei's beard!"

He tried to discreetly point to Wu but was still dizzy. "It's moving like snakes!" he said in a very loud whisper, leaning across the table, talking to Lloyd, Cole, and Zane.

Nya sighed, leaning on the heel of her hand, "When does this stuff wear off? It's kind of getting annoying…" she side glanced at her twin who apparently couldn't tell where his mouth was s he tried to eat a pieces of cooked meat.

Finally Cole had enough and sat him down on his butt by shoving Kai back to where his seat cushion was on the other side of the table. "So yea…" Cole coughed.

"And where is my flute?" Wu looked expectantly at the four. "You never returned it to me when you came back…" Cole swallowed, he tried to hold off of telling Wu but that was all over now.

"Weeeeell…" the black ninja started, biting his lip hard.

"Cole let Pythor take it!" Jay pointed across the table abruptly in a loud, obnoxious tone.

"Hey!" Cole shouted. "Like I would just let the enemy take it!" he growled back at the blue ninja.

"And excuse you! You were the one too busy laughing at the echo cave! I mean seriously, you are the only person that would laugh at the word 'butt'! My own brother doesn't even laugh at stupid stuff like that and he's like… eleven!"

"Enough!" Wu raised his voice and everyone was quiet again and seated.

"But-" Cole started.

Wu eyes him, "Butts are for sitting Cole". Jay snickered.

Lloyd was silently leaning back in his seat watching the others talk back and forth, still feeling bad for starting this whole mess.

"Now, after dinner you will go on Serpentine watch and you will find their hide out, do you all understand?" Wu looked around at the others.

"Yes sensei," they all groaned together.

Wu nodded, "Good… and remember boys… the power of lies can be strong if one does not look into the accusations…" he looked at Jay and Cole. "And this goes for you two, get all your facts straight before delivering an accusation". The blue and black ninjas hung their heads.

With that he disappeared into his room leaving the five teenagers and the young prince to finish dinner without him and get going.

The four teenaged ninja rode down to the ground on their golden creatures and looked around the city outside the palace walls. Lanterns lit the streets and very few were milling about or walking home, barely even noticing the four.

"Now if there was a massive Serpentine uprising… where would it be…" Zane frowned, looking around curiously.

Kai looked at the ground with Jay and Cole. "Hey… if their snakes… don't snake burrow?" Cole raised an eyebrow curiously.

"The catacombs?" Jay blinked.

"Then let's go," Zane started popping one of the tiles in the road and the four hopped inside, replacing the tile over their heads and Kai ignited his sword for light. "Careful," Zane looked back at the fire ninja.

Kai looked down at the thick, bubbling liquid around their ankles and Kai scrunched his nose and nodded. "Right… wouldn't wanna light us all up…" he swallowed.

It wasn't too quiet because they heard the snakes' laughter and chatter through the long and disgusting underground tunnels. It stunk like rotting flesh and petroleum and they tried to watch their step in the goop that was up to their ankles.

"So gross…" Jay held his nose and gagged, feeling dinner coming up his throat. He looked up to the left and saw a pair of skeletons against the wall they were walking through. Jay squealed and ran ahead, sloshing through the bubbling goop.

"Better douse the light," Cole kept his eyes forward.

When the tunnel ended in a bigger chamber they saw the snakes gathered around with Pythor on top of an old coffin. The four boys looked at one another and tried to listen.

"Now my friends… enemies… and enemies that pretend to be friends," Pythor started out, jokingly.

The snakes started laughing and mingling together more now. The ninja looked at one another worriedly. "He's joining them together… we must stop this…" Zane whispered.

"But how?" Kai looked up.

"Remember what sensei said before we left? Lies and false accusation!" Cole grinned, quietly chuckling to himself.

The four split up and hid around in other chambers surrounding the larger one where the gathering was taking place.

"Too bad you know the Hypnobrai are gonna screw things up!" Kai shouted in a snake like voice.

"Who said that!?" a Hypnobrai yelled in anger, glancing around. He spotted a Venomari, and slugged him in the snout for no reason.

"Those Fangpyre can bite my butt!" Jay laughed trying to sound like a Hypnobrai.

The snakes started arguing again and Pythor looked back at the other four leaders. "What's going on!? Why am I losing them!?"

The four generals shrugged.

"With the Constrictai; all that digging must have given them dirt for brains!" Zane laughed like a dork.

Cole held his face. "Wow Zane… that was terrible…" he muttered to himself.

The black ninja darted around the crowd, staying concealed to everyone. Well, everyone but the ever watchful eye of Pythor P. Chumsworth.

"Ninja!" Pythor whispered with contempt lace through his deep voice.

"We'll handle this," Skales nodded and led the other generals out.

Kai, Jay, and Zane were all waiting for something else to say when they saw Pythor's underlings heading their way. Cole joined up with them and looked at the four.

"Time to leave!" Jay started zipping out of the tunnels before waiting for the others, he wasn't fond of snakes, and was less fond of being in a catacomb filled with dead people while being chased by snakes in petroleum that could light up if they dropped a torch.

"Ninja!" another snake hissed loudly and now every snake was alerted to their presence.

All the serpentine started running after the ninja, all now alert to their presence. "Quickly!" Cole shouted. He was the first to go up and through the tiles that led to the main road above their heads.

He yanked the other three up and they started running away quickly, not even bothering to plug the hole back up because it would be useless.

"I see Seprentine!" Nya looked over the side of the ship, straining her brown eyes to see the snakes that were trailing out of the city's catacombs, chasing the boys.

Wu didn't respond to her warning though because he was busy with his own worries. "Nya…" Wu looked around, alarmed. "Where is Lloyd?"

Nya jerked her head back, "LLOYD?" she shouted loudly enough for anyone to hear underneath the deck. No answer.

"Haha," Lloyd laughed as he tried to play ninja past the houses and alley ways. "It was boring back on the ship". He grinned to himself. He knew he probably shouldn't have sneaked away again, but with the ninja occupying the Serpentine, he would be perfectly safe.

"I THINK THEY WENT THIS WAY!"

Lloyd jumped when he heard people screaming and hissing cackles. A barrage of snakes entered the alley way and found the little lost prince. "Well, look who we have here…" a Hypnobrai chuckled. "Pythor will be happy to see you…"

Lloyd swallowed.

"HELP!"

The four ninja stopped dead in their tracks upon hearing the raspy yell. "That was Lloyd!" Jay looked around, trying to see him.

"SNAKES!" they heard him wail again.

The four tried to run after the sound of the prince's voice but they could not find another Serpentine again. They all looked at one another, terrified and ashamed they lost him. All they could do was to go back to their ship and bring the sad news to their master.

"What do you mean he was taken!?" Wu yelled, outraged. "You are to keep my nephew safe!" He raised his staff as the four boys knelt to the ground, apologetically.

"We are so sorry sensei!" they four frantically said together, covering the tops of their heads for fear that Wu would strike them with the long, raised staff.

The king and sensei sat down in his seat and covered his face, letting the anger leave. "I broke my promise to her…" he quietly said.

"What?" Zane blinked, hearing the muttered words.

Wu ignored the ice ninja and quickly stood up and started out of the ship cabin. "Where are you going?" The five teenagers ran after him.

"None of your concern!" he testily said. "I am going away for a little bit and I am most sorry to say I will not be back for a while…" he looked back. "You must unlock your full powers… I do not know what those serpentine are planning but I can tell you this, Lloyd is in an awful mess…"

The five watched as he left their ship. They couldn't help but feel horrible for letting the boy out of their sight and now he was in the hands of their biggest enemy yet.

The five looked at one another depressingly and went into their rooms.

**Now we get to the Full Potentials and stuff and I'm excited because I worked so hard on these 8 chapters :3 (each potential journey will get two chapters) So there are these two between ones about the Red Mask and the finding more about the Great Devourer and then starting on 14 out of 28, will the real fun begin hahahaha**

**Zane- 14: Tick Tock Goes the Clock & 15: Faded Memories**  
**Jay- 16: Date with Disaster & 17: Festival of Fear**  
**Cole- 18: The Blade Cup & 19: Dirty Dancing**  
**Kai- 20: My Enemy is my Shipmate & 21: Green**

**And then of course there is my ever favorite chapter 28... When the Day met the Night and you can only imagine who's the main characters in THAT chapter if you read my playlists or fave songs on deviantart... or if you really know me that well XD**

**Thanks for reading dearies! Love you all!**

**~Mar**


	13. Ninja VS Red Mask

"Welcome to the Lost City of Ouroboris," Pythor grinned. He gestured to a giant heap of sand in the middle of the desert with an odd, cracked rock with a keyhole in front of the pile.

"There's nothing here though…" Lloyd squeaked curiously.

The purple snake looked back and twisted some sort of jagged key into the hole. The sand started draining away from the bottom and there it was, a city made of rock and sand with a hideous statue of a large snake.

It was built like a fortress, with high walls and watch towers. The tall gates had iron barred gates with high towers on both side for archers and guards to look out from. Lloyd almost got dizzy and fell back because of its height.

"Now to find the four fang blades and take the surface world for our own," Pythor grinned. Lloyd looked down at his feet in the sand and silently planned a hundred ways he could kill the snake that held him captive.

The four young ninja lay on their beds. That was it, Wu was gone and now they were stuck by themselves. They didn't know what to do. They didn't know what they could have done to find Lloyd or to stop their master from leaving them.

"We can't just stop here… come on…" Nya looked around at the four bunks. No one answered. She sighed, "Fine… I'll be upstairs…" she walked out, shutting the door.

"Man… if only we knew who this green ninja was…" Cole closed his eyes with a frown. "I bet that we'd be unstoppable…"

Kai sat up, "Hey… how about whoever finds out who this Red Mask is… then maybe… we'll know who the best is and who will be the green ninja!"

"That sounds silly Kai…" Zane looked over with a frown. "She is nothing more than a girl with mask who is a little too brazen for her own good, catching her will give us nothing but reward money-".

Jay sat up, "I'm in!" he laughed ignoring Zane's reasoning.

"Then first thing tomorrow, we're going for a hunt!" the red ninja laughed.

Zane simply lay back on his bunk and shook his head. Sometimes his friends could not see the logical side of things and always seemed to not hear his logical thinking. After hearing the other three's footsteps above deck he forced himself up as well.

Wu put down the money to pay for the tea and took the pot. "You know no one comes back after using that stuff…" the old woman at the counter frowned deeply. "Only a _fool_ buys it". She sneered.

Travelers Tea was one of the more dangerous potions to use. The old witch took pride in her potions and tea mixes but regretted ever making the Traveler's Tea, too many foolish men and women walked in and bought it to travel to the darkest and most dangerous realms in the world.

She had warned so many people and they all ignored her in return, wanting nothing but to go to the dark realms to become powerful. Mystake even wondered why she still sold it.

"Then I will not be troubling you again", Wu smirked from under his hat and shut the shop door. He made a fire outside and poured the tea and leaves on it.

The flames turned from red orange to a sickly green color and they engulfed him in a blink of an eye. After a rush of wind and flame; Wu found himself in a world of darkness; an ever raging storm happened over his head with loud thunder and lightning.

"Well… hello there Wu…" Wu heard a dark, all too familiar voice.

"Hello there… brother"

The ninja popped up bright and early and set out, leaving Nya alone with the ship. "Okay so where shall we go first!?" Cole huffed.

"We'll I'm going around on my own, seeya!" Jay's nun chucks turned into his Pegasus and they took off right away.

Cole did the same with his gryphon and Kai and Zane were the only ones without a flying pet. Kai scowled at them as he watched Cole chase Jay in the sky, looking like they were having the time of their lives.

"Can't catch me Cole!" Jay howled over the wind. Thunder was neighing with him while Squawky did nothing but squawk back angrily, trying to catch up. Cole was tightly holding onto the saddle.

"TOO FAST!"

As the two chased the other far off from their docked ship, they found it; a giant eye sore dead center in the desert that was never there the day before. The two had a perfect view from the air. "Cole?" Jay looked back. "What is that?" The two looked down and swallowed.

Nya tightened ropes and strapped herself into her mech and went out, looking for Serpentine while the guys would be seeking their true potentials. She steered the mech through the forest, trying not to do much damage around her but she was still too clumsy with it, it seemed.

She unhooked herself and took out her bag of traveling tools and started fixing the mech, tightening bolts in the skeletal structure. She hated that it needed so much upkeep right now.

She practically jumped when she heard the sound of rustling and looked behind her at the clusters of trees and bushes. She couldn't see anybody and shrugged and quickly went back to her tweaking. _"Maybe some birds or squirrels or something…" _she quietly thought to herself.

Something from behind yanked her by the end of her cape onto the ground and she saw a pair of magenta eyes staring down at her. "Payback time brat".

Nya felt pressure behind, at the base of her neck and her brain went fuzzy.

Kai and Zane followed Cole and Jay on their own creatures and found the tall, the tall, sandy walls of the city of snakes.

"Ouroboris?" Zane read the sign.

"Ouro-what now?" Jay blinked, looking over at Zane.

Zane pointed. "That is the name of this city… but how did it get here over night?" he brought his hand over his mouth, looking with curiosity.

"So… we just knock and ask if they have Lloyd or what?" Jay looked at the others with a frown.

From above a dozen Fangpyre dropped down from the top of the wall around the city, landing right on top of the ninja. They blacked out.

Everything was blurry when the ninja opened their four sets of eyes. The sun was beating down on them hard and the white sands around them made it all the more brighter. They heard the sounds of cheering snakes and saw nothing but a colored blur of red, green, black, orange, white, and blue until their vision cleared.

They were in an enclosed arena, and on the other side, waking up as well, was the Red Mask in her mech suit.

"Oh no…" Cole swallowed. "Well… looks like we found her…"

The others looked around and saw their weapons on a pedestal and next to them; was Lloyd, in a cage.

"Guys!" the prince shouted, rattling the bars furiously, trying to break out even though it was useless.

"We will handle this Lloyd! Don't worry!" Zane called to the child.

Lloyd nodded from inside his prison. "I'm sorry!" the little boy started crying from behind the cell bars and slumped forward, cheeks pressed against the cage and looking hopeless.

Nya frantically looked around in her mech suit and bit her lip. Now she was in a mess wasn't she? She quickly unhooked herself and stood up on the solid floor of the arena, legs a little wobbly. How long was she out?

"Ah so our little thief is awake too now," Pythor chuckled. "Let the Slither Pit begin!" he announced and the underlings cheered. "One will leave and one will stay! That depends all on who wins".

Nya's mouth went dry as she looked across the way at the four ninja. This was bad. If they found out the Red Mask was her… well, she already knew their general opinion about the cloaked vigilante and they didn't exactly like her. Well, maybe Jay did a little, but maybe even less since she did gas them in the Toxic Bogs the other day.

The four young men looked over at the red cloaked thief as she hooked herself back into her mech and found it was able to move again better. She would have to fight them, she sighed as she looked at the crudely made arena they were in. She widened her eyes in a realization and then smiled.

The metal machine stood up and the ninja nearly broke their necks trying to look at the top flag with her symbol on it.

"Sorry guys…" Nya whispered with a smirk.

She started swinging the rusty metal arms around and the four boys started dodging, getting away just barely. "All we need is our weapons and we can get out of here…" Kai slid back as the mech drew closer again.

"How are gonna do that Kai?" Jay looked behind him. He frowned and looked up. "Hey, I thought we were friends, lady!" he yelled up at her when the next swing nearly took his head off. He ducked just in time though. "HEY!"

Nya chuckled at Jay's response and then nodded. She'll have to tell them about her idea of escape so they would work with her. She let Cole hit her robotic legs and she sailed forward. They gathered around the cage that she was hooked into, ready to tear it off and beat her up or at least threaten her into surrendering.

"Listen, pretend to fight and I can get us all out of here," she said from underneath the casket in a hushed voice.

"Why should we trust you? You started attacking us!" Zane quietly said back. "And you knocked us out back at the Toxic Bogs!"

Nya sighed; man these boys could be thick. "Play along… please, I have enough strength to smash the cage around us and you can grab your weapons and save your prince!"

The four looked at one another and nodded. "Okay, we'll trust you… for now," Kai pointed down in a threatening tone. Nya's eyebrows bounced up quickly as she flashed a quick smile, it was so funny that Kai was treating her like this and he didn't even know it was her.

She got back up and started the fight again, firing her harpoons and grapples. The ninja dodged and the projectiles hit the wooden cage above and around them, hooking on. Nya tugged back on the grapples and it ripped the old, wooden structure apart.

The ninja leapt up and climbed out and through, seizing their weapons from the shock Serpentine king. Pythor hissed in angry annoyance and motioned for the minions to climb from their stands and attack the escaping ninja while he started dragging Lloyd in his cage along with the other generals.

"GUYS!" Lloyd screamed. As Pythor jerkily dragged him in the cage along. "GET ME OUT OF HERE!"

The five spun around from their fight. They tried to push through the hundreds of Serpentine but their greater numbers held the ninja back.

Finally Nya stomped over, causing the enemies to flee for fear of being squished beneath her clunky metal feet. "Grab my mech and let's get out of here!" she yelled at them, craning her neck down.

"What about Lloyd?!" Kai looked back. Pythor had Lloyd out of the cage now and was grabbing the child by the collar of his robes and the blonde bit his lip, trying to move along with Pythor so he wouldn't choke to death being dragged in the hot sand.

"GO ON! RUN GUYS!" he shouted, waving one arm. "Forget about me!" he cried. It was what he deserved for not obeying the ninja three times. It was all his fault so why would they get captured again because of him?

The four did as instructed and grabbed on to the mech suit like what the Red Mask told them to do. Nya crossed her fingers and pulled a short lever. A rumbling sound occurred which created flaming jets from the bottom of her metal mech feet. "Please don't fall apart!" she whispered.

Like she had hoped, they lifted off and she did her best to steer the machine to the Imperial City's general direction. However, the metal was overheating in the hot sun and she growled with frustration. "Jump, I'll be fine…!" she told them.

The ninja didn't have to think twice of what she told them and they let go. The golden weapons had fallen from their hands during the high freefall and Nya crashed her mech dunes away from them.

The four boys coughed and spat out sand and shook their sleeves and heads, pulling their hoods off. Jay removed his gloves and started wiping his eyes which stung. The others were waist deep in the dry sand, clawing their hands to pull themselves out. Kai was the first to pull himself out.

As the other ninja helped one another out of the burning desert sands, Kai ran ahead, trying to shake sand from his pants and went to grab their weapons. He was careful not to touch all four at once; still remembering what happened to Samukai.

He climbed over another dune and saw the wreckage from the mech suit and quickly ran over to the site. "Hey are you okay?" he called to the girl he had no idea was his twin sister.

"YES! I'm fine!" she shouted, turned away. Her cloak was in shreds as her tunic and tights were ripping a bit along the seams. She was fumbling with a red mask and Kai stepped closer. "You're voice… I know that voice…"

"Just take the weapons and leave! I'll be fine!" she tried not to turn around. "Don't look at me!"

She was turned around by the shoulder and sighed, looking at her boots. "Nya!?" Kai's mouth dropped.

**Well I hope you enjoyed that insanely long chapter... writing fight scenes can be so hard ;U; **

**I am vowing to stop getting so many fic ideas and to update fast because it is tearing me apart looking at everything I'm doing... **

**Thank you for reading =w=**

**~Mar**


	14. The Great Serpent

"You were a fool to come here…" Garmadon growled at his brother. The only real features Wu could make out in the lack of light was his piercing red eyes and the white marks that gave off a faint silver white light.

Wu stepped back from the older one, "I did not come looking for a fight Garmadon," he held his hands up in defense and t show he had no weapon in grasp. He took a better look at him. "Four? Four arms?" he seemed shocked.

The taller brother narrowed his eyes and looked down at the brother in white. "You know why I came here after all… Why _did_ you want to find me on your own?" he took out one of his swords. "Come to end me here yourself? In my realm?"

Wu was backing up more and more as the stronger one stepped forward. With a snap of his fingers Wu felt himself being pulled by his feet, then legs, then back and looked back to see blob like creatures engulfing him. Garmadon just stood there and was laughing.

"Please Garmadon!" Wu called, stretching a hand out. "I didn't come to fight you!" he pleaded.

Garmadon folded both sets of arms and stood and watched with a smug grin, he would win and without a king, he could take it.

"It's about Lloyd!" he finally said. "He's in trouble!" he felt himself slip in more. It was almost up to his neck now and only his outstretched arm was outside the blob. He never expected Garmadon to have him killed on the spot when he got there.

"My son… in danger?" Garmadon's narrow, red eyes widened. He hesitated at first but moved forward quickly and grabbed Wu's hand before he slipped in, pulling him back out.

The creature slumped away back into a black goo pit not far away. Wu swallowed, looking back and heavily breathing with relief. He thought for sure Garmadon would have let him slip in all the way.

Garmadon continued to glare at his brother and lowered his head angrily, "Tell me; what have you let my boy get into?!" he demanded.

"He opened Serpentine tombs…" Wu panted.

"Oh no…" Garmadon sighed, clicking his sharp teeth together and held a hand to his forehead, thinking things over. "Okay Wu… I'll help you… but only because of my son".

Wu sighed, some things never changed, at least he would help. "How do we get out of here?" He looked around. It seemed to stretched for millions of miles and never ended and probably did. He'd need Garmadon anyways to show him the hidden portals back to his world.

"It's a bit of a journey to the Mountain of Madness…" Garmadon looked over at the tallest, black mountain range with the swirling storm over its highest peak. "Better hurry… it's almost midnight… and that's when the cragglings like to feed…" he plainly said as if nothing was wrong with the sentence.

Wu blinked. Leave it to his brother to choose the strangest realm of them all to live in.

Kai stood staring at his sister, shocked at the realization she not only helped them escape, but she was the girl who robbed and helped others to the point where she had a price on her head.

"You were the Red Mask the whole time…" Kai hugged his darker haired twin tightly. "Nya… you're a real hero! And all you do is carry a sword and wear a mask!"

"Say that to the five hundred gold pieces for my head," she laughed. "In all seriousness… I'll be fine… take the weapons and…," she grabbed his hands. "And please, PLEASE don't tell the others!"

"You got it," he gave an honest smile, ruffling her short, black hair and winked.

He picked the weapons up and started running in the direction of the others. They were all starting to walk in the general direction of where they parked the ship and Kai looked back to see the mech flying once again over their heads.

He tossed each ninja their weapon and started their hot and sweaty trip back to the Bounty. Each weapon turned into their creature and they rode off.

Nya locked the door in the castle and took a bath before leaving. One thing she hated about the Bounty was they had no space for bathing and she didn't want to bathe with all four boys in the place. She still remembered almost a week ago when Cole and Jay accidentally walked in on her because she forgot to lock the door.

She took what she got when she made trips back to the palace.

She frowned looking at her clothes which had a bunch of small rips and decided that heading back home to Daisie would leave them looking like brand new in no time. So she grabbed a horse and started back to the valley she grew up in.

"Nya!?" everyone looked around when they got below deck. It was getting dark out and no sign of the young maiden they felt was family.

"She probably went out to restock cabinets in town or something…" Cole yawned, stretching his sore muscles.

Everyone's muscles ached as well and were ready for bed at this point. All the heart and fighting made them lose their appetite. They then heard the stepping of feet and all sat up to see Nya walking in with her big satchel over her shoulder.

"Well hello there…" she smiled. "… so… find Lloyd?" she asked with fake concern, playing like she'd stayed back the whole time. Kai looked at her and she looked back, surely he didn't tell them like he promised. He winked and that made her feel a little better.

"No… in case you didn't notice…" Cole gruffly said. He didn't need a reminder of their failure.

"We're going to bed, no need to worry about dinner," Jay yawned, closing his eyes and stretching back on his bed.

"Okay," she smiled and went back into her own room to hide her clothes and decided to go to bed as well. Fighting a hoard of snakes will do that to you.

As laid in her cot her brain was itching for answers about what the Serpentine were planning to do next and why Lloyd was even in their clutches in the first place. She gave up on sleep and wandered into Wu's room which no one was allowed to go into under any circumstances.

Nya lingered outside for a couple minutes and then decided that she needed to research many things on her own. There was no Wu to bring out books or scrolls so she wouldn't dig through his things, some of which could be very personal so she seized the opportunity.

She started looking through the papers and took whatever she could find and brought into the main deck where they did most of their group discussion research.

The next morning Nya was found by the four boys; up and looking at maps and charts, she looked really upset about whatever she was reading, which was odd for her. "Nya?" Jay asked first. "Something wrong?"

"Everything is wrong," she looked up with a worried look. She sat down and rubbed her temples. "I've been up all night first of all…" she yawned. "I was getting almost nowhere and I decided that we needed some things in town anyways I forgot yesterday… and while I was there… I followed a pair of Serpentine secretly and I found out…" she took in a breath. "Do you guys know about the Devourer? _The Great Devourer_?"

The four looked at one another and shook their heads. She leaned back in her seat and took out old scrolls, "I found these in Wu's room last night…" she bit her lip. She still felt a little guilty for going through his things when he was out still but it had to be done. "I was looking for more on Serpentine and I came across… well… some private stuff…"

"Like what?" Zane slowly asked, brows furrowing.

She took out a weathering piece of parchment with torn edges that showed a great snake looming over the land. "Remember now?" she raised a dark, thin eyebrow.

Everyone then remembered, "When we first met…" Cole whispered. "He told us there was a demon snake worshipped like a god among Serpentine…"

"It was what bit Lord Garmadon as a young child…" she pulled out another small painting. The four looked at it curiously, "In case you don't recognize them… that's the two as kids with their father…" she looked down. "Then I found this one too…" she showed one of the brothers a little older with a young woman at Garmadon's side, all were dressed in royal attire. "I don't know who she is though…" she trailed off.

Kai narrowed his eyes, "I've seen that face somewhere before…" he bit his lip, "Too bad I wouldn't know where I'd see a noble woman like her…"

"Yea… me too," Jay agreed. Zane and Cole nodded too. "How old are these? I mean… Wu has hair…"

"Don't know… but something weird is going on…" Nya brushed her hair back. "There's so many things that even I can't begin understand by looking at this… Wu is keeping a thick shroud around everything and I want to know why… but somehow we are ALL connected to this… and not by some mere coincidence of our parents knowing one another…"

"We shouldn't dig into personal matters," Zane held his hands up. "It's not right to go through his highness' things".

Nya looked up from her seat, "Why shouldn't we know? It's obvious this is important to understanding something bigger… all sensei has ever done is keep a tight seal on everything… why? If it can help us see the bigger picture… why not?"

"Is… there anything else you dug up?" Cole slowly asked next.

She let out a slow breath, "Yea… in reference to the Great Devourer… apparently four of its fangs were made as keys to unlocking it again after the first king sealed it away… where… ever it is… and the Serpentine have allegedly found a map that will help them find all four from what I heard".

"Then we need to find them first… at least one," Jay nodded. "That way they can't unlock it".

Nya sat back in her seat. "Thing is; I wouldn't know where to start… and we need to find Lloyd too…" she wiped her eyes.

The other observed how tired she really looked. She was always so full of energy and knew all the answers for them off the top of her head. She closed her eyes which had dark circles underneath. Kai assumed she had been up all night since she got back, not to mention she rode all the way to the valley and back and walked out to the parked ship but he didn't know that one.

"Maybe you should take a break Ny…" Kai folded his hands together on the table.

The black haired girl looked up and sighed. "Hey, I'm fine". She weakly smiled, "Who else is gonna take care of you jerks when his highness is not around?"

The last of the Anacondrai looked over the map he found when he tricked Lloyd into trusting him not long ago with a sneaky smile on his lips.

"Looks like that map the brat had is of value anyways…" Pythor hissed. He looked back at the tied up child nodding off against the wall.

Skales slithered in a pace formation, "But how are you going to find them? There are no clues! No map markers or anything!"

"All I know is when the five tribes are united… the blades' locations will be revealed…" Pythor growled, staring at the map, hoping for answers to come to him.

**Was grounded for the weekend and couldn't sneak time to get online to post... (my mom banned internet but I was able to actually write because I played the whole 'stifling my creativity and mind' card) but she didn't know I was able to look up stuff I needed and such on my DS XD**

**Ahem... so of course since I'm finally able to write Garmadon into it for realsies, I'm happy once again XD So far this is longer than the third installment but I hope to change it... been getting new ideas to add in... flashbacks maybe.**

**The whole Rebooted one is gonna be so much fun for me... doing a lot of 19th century and steampunk designs and research! **

**So thank you so much for reading and favoriting this story set! :D **

**~Mar**


	15. Tick Tock Goes the Clock

A couple of days later, the five teenagers were still in the dark with the fang blade business. Wu's documents gave them barely anything to go on and Nya picked the room clean of anything that had to do with the so called Great Devourer or Serpentine and his study in the palace was always under guard when he was not in there.

All she thought of to do was to put up pictures of the blades and hope someone would see them and report to the guards back at the castle. Nya stayed behind and poured through a couple of old books with paintings from Wu's past; hoping to figure out who the woman was and what connection everyone had in this strange grand scheme.

The four boys were wandering around Jumanokai Village, a tiny, snowy, town in the mountain pass between the valley farmlands and the north half of the kingdom where the provinces were.

The four were looking for leads on these fang blades and of Lloyd as well. Jay was pinning up crudely done drawings of fang blades he did on the sides of houses and sheds. Three days of searching and it was going nowhere for them.

"This is getting us no where!" Kai complained as he kicked pebbles on the cobbled streets; leaning against a building as Jay tried to show a passerby the picture.

As Kai, Jay, and Cole squabbled amongst themselves about how effect their efforts were and what else they could do, Zane's pale blue eyes followed a black falcon circling around the town. He remembered of course from days back.

He started walking in the direction it was flying when it took off again and the other three noticed. "Zane?" Cole asked.

He kept walking, almost in a trance. "Hey buddy?" Jay blinked as the white ninja kept walking forward, away from them. "Zane, it's just a bird…"

"But I feel like… I know it from someplace…" he tilted his head, eyes locked on the falcon.

Kai's own brown eyes widened, "Uh… yea, when we were going to hunt for Lloyd the second time, you were acting like a moron, flapping your wings and all…" he folded his arms with a frown.

"No, not like that," Zane shook his head, eyes still on the falcon.

The lightning ninja's sapphire eyes widened more. "Wait, you mean you think it has something to do with your past Zane?" Jay realized.

"Maybe…" the white ninja muttered.

He grew up with a bunch of other homeless kids whose parents had abandoned them, were killed, or just died.

However, he had zero links to his past, unlike them. The matron who cared for them told him he had to of had amnesia because he was about twelve when he was taken in and he wasn't filthy or underfed, like he was just dropped off by someone who obviously didn't want him. Zane always wondered why. He didn't have many memories before he was taken in either, just emptiness.

He looked back at the others and turned his shurakins into Frost and started riding off. "Hey!" Jay called after him and the other three chased him. Despite their calls, he had to do this.

They rode through Birchwood Forest, the forest down the slopes of the North Mountain plains, where almost no one dared to venture because there was a legend that a horrible monster was living there.

Zane didn't care though; he kept chasing the falcon that reappeared to him a second time, wherever it led him.

"Zane!" Kai shouted, almost catching up.

"That bird keeps showing up… I feel like I know it… what if it has something to do with my family?" he almost sounded mad. "If you found a link to your parents… like… if they were alive and you found something that could find them, would you do it?" he looked at Kai.

Cole's gryphon landed next to Zane on Frost, "Wait… what are you talking about? Parents? That's what this is about?"

"I don't talk about it much… but I often wonder where I came from…" he trailed off, looking up at the bare tree branches. It had started snowing as they reached the more mountainous region borders of the forest. "I want to know if my parents abandoned me because they didn't want me… or if there was some other… more important reason…"

"We forget sometimes… you're always quiet…" Jay shifted his shoulders, looking at the snowy ground. It was getting chillier.

Zane started off again, "We'll follow with you," Kai rode alongside. "We have your back".

However Zane's golden creature took off through the snow, faster than the others could keep up so they decided to just follow his trail until he stopped.

Lightning cracked overhead and dark shadows all around as the two brothers walked on down the twisted and broken trail. Wu tried not to shudder or flinch every time he heard a monstrous screech.

"So tell me…" Garmadon didn't look down. "How did Lloyd find your map of the tombs? I swear Misako would have threatened to kill you if you let him get into trouble like that… not to mention how much she hated Serpentine…" he side glanced. "And you must have known how much I'd want to kill you for raising my child and allowing him to be put in harm's way like this…"

Wu narrowed his eyes and frowned, "She did threaten me but… how would you know that?!"

"I'm her husband and Lloyd is my son… or have you forgotten after the eight years I've been gone?" he growled, not looking at the younger and then stopped. Wu looked back and paused as well.

"I just mean you say it like you've seen her recently…" the younger brother shrugged like he meant nothing by it.

"It is none of your business what I do with my wife or what I talk to her about…" he folded both sets of arms angrily. "If I have seen her since of recent or not…"

Wu continued walking, "Fine then… brood… don't save your son… the more you argue and defend against me, the more time you waste…"

Garmadon bit down and started walking again too.

The falcon landed in front of a tree in the snow. Zane dismounted and the unicorn turned back into the pair of shurakins and Zane picked them up from the soft snow and hooked them back on his belt. He looked back to see if the others caught up, he was alone still.

His hand traced the bark of the tree and a hidden door popped open a little. Zane's gloved hand retracted and held it against his chest. He sucked in a breath and opened the heavy door all the way, ready for whatever was inside.

It was very dark except for a single, strange looking light when the Falcon came in and seemed to switch it on for the white ninja. As he stepped down a wooden staircase that hugged the walls of the tree, he realized this was some kind of hideaway, for what he did not know.

Then he heard it; a ticking noise. He looked around for some sort of mechanism that could be the source. He found an old looking device against the wall under the stairway. He touched the glass on it and remembered it was a wind up clock. They were getting popular in the Imperial City and also remembered that towns like Kai and Nya's village still used sun dials.

He looked at the pendulum that should have been swinging; it was still in the glass case. Zane's heart beat quickened and so did the ticking noise echoing in the hollow tree. He looked at his chest with fear and then quickly turned his attention to the old desk and found pieces of parchment.

He found one for the falcon which made him raise his eyebrows. He grabbed the falcon quickly and then found a hatch on the bird's chest. A gear like symbol was engraved on the plate inside. "How the…" he trailed off.

He looked back to the piles of parchment and flipped through them even faster. Then his heart felt like it stopped because the ticking stopped too. He looked back at the clock, no movement.

He felt his focus slipping and the world went black as he passed from consciousness.

**Here we go; the full potential chapters! :D **

**Thanks for reading! :D**

**~Mar**


	16. Faded Memories

The black, red, and blue ninja dismounted and picked their gold weapons up and hooked them back on their sheaths or belts.

"Come on in here," Cole stepped through the hole in the tree where Zane's tracks ended.

Jay grinned and looked around, "Neat…" He admired the ingenuity of the whole hideaway. "I'd love to meet the guy made all of this… sure Nya would too…" he quietly admired.

The other three walked all the way down to find Zane sitting on the wooden floor, hunched over and seemed to be playing with the falcon on his hand.

"Zane?" Kai stepped forward first. "Are you okay?" he blinked seeing the assassin in white was apparently upset about something.

Zane looked over his shoulder and sighed, getting to his feet. He pulled the folds of his white tunic back and revealed an open hatch in him.

The other three ninja retracted, horrified, at the open hole filled with wires, dials, and plates in their friend. "What happened to you!?" they shouted in unison.

The white assassin closed his eyes and almost looked like he was about to cry. "I was always like this… I'm not even human…" he handed them the parchment. "I don't even know what I am anyone…"

"Zane… it… it's okay, you're still our team mate," They sat around him. "Our brother… we don't care how your different."

Their friend hung his head, "If… if you don't mind… I would like to be… well, alone…"

The three others stood up, understanding that he needed to be by himself and went back up, leaving Zane to his thoughts.

He pulled the papers back over to him and looked them over again and again. Then something caught his eye.

"A… a memory switch?" he blinked.

Trying to look inside the gaping hole in him, he looked at the designs and traced his finger over each switch in the row. Then he found the right placement. He flicked the small switch up and the current world around him disappeared but he was still awake.

Zane was looking through eyes of him from years ago. He knew this because he was standing, looking in a mirror. He looked around and saw a man with red brown hair. Zane realized he was sitting on the ground like what his real body was doing present day, the man helped him up.

He didn't remember who he was, but he was important. He had a kind smile that made Zane feel comfortable and warm to be near.

He watched his life go by, with every flash the man got older. He didn't know how many years ago all of this was but then, the last scene was when he noticed he was crying not just in the memory, but right now in the present.

Zane was at the man's bedside, he looked very old and knew what was coming next, he snapped at attention when he heard the man talking to him slowly, holding his hand gently.

"I made you… to protect those who can't protect themselves... You are the son I never had Zane… I love you, and I want you to start a new life… find friends… do great things… because I know you will be so important… even now… you were always important to me…" The hand let go.

And that was the end. Zane's eyes remained widened as reality returned to normal. He stood to his feet, holding the falcon close to his chest. He curiously looked over at the covered up bed. There was no body in it. From the look of his memories, no one else but the two of them lived here.

The white ninja ignored it and uncovered a dusty, old, rolled up scroll. Zane carefully undid it to make sure it would not rip. It was a picture of the two of them and the falcon just after he was created it seemed.

He looked at parchment with his designs on it and saw, scribbled in the corner, was name. Zane's squinted to see the small, neat hand writing. "Samuel Julien…" he swallowed. That was his father's name and so that was the name he would take. "I am Zane Julien and my father loved me… and wanted me to protect those who are innocent…" he looked up and pocketed the scroll to hang in his room.

"Man… I feel bad for Zane…" Kai sat in the snow, catching pale sun rays on the gold sword out of boredom.

Jay was looking around the tree and came across a sign, "Hey guys?" Jay nervously said.

"What is it now Jay?" Cole rolled his eyes. "Find a rat or something?"

"Uh… no…"

"Then what is it?"

"What is… a… Treehorn?" He narrowed his eyes to read the sign.

Cole and Kai walked around the large the trunk where Jay was standing to look at the sign that readd "Beware of Treehorns".

Out of the corner of Cole's eye he swore he saw the trees move. "Did you see that?" he jumped turning his head.

"What?" Jay backed up against him. "I didn't see anything!" He leaned against Cole with fear, voice cracking.

The three all backed up against each other, weapons in hand. Then they saw more movement and Jay squealed.

Zane looked up and frowned to himself, "What was that?" he ran upstairs and saw his three friends fighting a heard of the tall, white monsters whose legs looked like the trees of the forest and white fur around their neck. Most of the creatures had four, shiny green eyes.

They tried attacking the tall monsters at their hoof like feet but it did little good because they were so thick. They felt like ants beneath them and finally Kai turned around. "Zane!" he called to their newly discovered android friend.

Then there was a loud roar that made the four cover their ears. Through the monsters came one bigger than the rest with a mane of white and brown fur and eight, glowing amber eyes.

"EXCUSE ME BUT WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!" Jay screamed at the tops of his lungs.

Zane's eyes narrowed, "The queen…" he through his hood over his head, took out his weapons of gold and charged ahead.

"What are you doing!?" Cole yelled at him, watching Zane take a battle ready stance. "He's crazy…" he looked back at Kai.

"You would hurt my friends!" he angrily shouted at the queen Treehorn. Inside his mind was an echoing voice.

_"You little human… you are not even human… you are nothing…you are a freak of nature itself"_

Zane stood tall, "I don't care where it was I came from… I know who I really am… I am Zane Julien; I'm the son of Samuel Julien, a kind man; I protect those who are innocent and helpless. That's what makes me strong!"

Around the ice ninja, glowed a pale blue and white circle of frost. In a white light, Zane's body looked like ice and he felt all the more powerful as cold sensations shot through his body.

"Whoa…" the three looked on in awe.

"That must be a full potential… that must be what it looks like…" Kai's brown eyes widened so big he thought his eyeballs would pop right out. He craved to unlock his powers, hoping he would be the green ninja.

Zane shot a beam of ice at the queen's many eyes and climbed up her monstrous legs, slicing with the sharp blades of his shurakins at the joints at lightning fast speed.

She howled loudly in pain and tried to shake him off her legs but he made it up higher and gripped onto her long, off white and brown, matted fur on the back of her neck, determined to send her running away for good, back into the deepest parts of the forest.

She started turning around to run away and Zane leapt from her back and into a roll through the powder snow. Cole, Kai, and Jay ran to him, kneeling in the snow around him.

"Zane what happened? You were all depressed and now… well… you unlocked your full potential!" Jay shouted, excited.

Zane let out a breath and through his mask back from his sweaty, red face. "I… I had a memory switch… I saw my father… how he cared and loved me… he told me I was made to protect others… I guess… it gave me a new sense of purpose…" he looked at his gloved hands.

"Glad to have you back Zane… and no matter what, you'll still be the same old Zane," Cole threw an arm around the white ninja and Kai did the same on the other side.

"So… what are we going to do about the fang blades?" Jay remembered.

"Now? Let's go home," Zane smiled. "We can search for fang blades tomorrow".

**Thanks for reading! :D**

**~Mar**


	17. Date with Disaster

Snakes squabbled and hissed at one another while others teased and poked at others, going back to their tribal clichés instead of mingling together like how it use to be. The only groups daring to speak to one another were the Fangpyre and Hypnobrai because their leaders were good friends.

"The army is growing restless," Skales folded his blue scaled arms with impatience. He himself was about ready to back out of the deal the tribes made to Pythor.

Pythor paced more and more, trying to figure the great puzzle out. He stared at the map again and growled with frustration. "What am I not understanding?!"

"Well if you're not going to do anything more than stare at a map, I'm taking my staff back!" Acidious hissed angrily and was the first to back out. "The deal is off!" He grabbed the other's too and was about ready to pass them back out.

"Wait!" Pythor yelled after them.

Skales grabbed the map as well, "And this was my map the brat stole! So I'm taking it back!" He knocked into Acidious while trying to grab his staff from him. The staffs fell out of the Venomari's hand and the anti-venom contents spilled onto the map. "Watch it!" Skales shouted. "You'll ruin it!"

Pythor's magenta eyes widened. "That's it…"

"What's it?" Fangtom's heads glared together. The other three looked back at the Serpentine king.

"It's the venom in the staffs! They reveal the locations!" he slithered around, taking each staff back from the leaders in a rush and dripping more of the venom into the map as the bottom layer bled through images; revealing the four digging places. "That's what the five uniting meant!"

Pythor darkly chuckled, "Move out! We start our search! Some of you; stay behind and watch the brat," he gestured to Lloyd who was sleeping in his cell on the cold floor, passed out from boredom.

"And so judging by the skeletal structure, the venom is still fresh in the fangs long after everything is decayed," Nya showed the remains of a Fangpyre. "However, I've been looking for ways to undo the effects without an anti-venom and I believe that a quickened heart rate or some kind of shock to the body will knock the toxic pollutants out". She proudly said; hands behind her back and chest out with pride in her research.

The four boys were not paying attention though or were even aware her 'lecture' was done. Cole was scribbling something else completely different down, Kai and Zane were quietly talking and Jay was dreamily staring at Nya.

Finally, the young woman gave up and went back to other things. If one of them gets bit by a Fangpyre, that'd be their problem if they were going to ignore her.

The others also broke up and went to do some combat training, well, except for Jay. He quietly stepped up to Nya and coughed. "Uh… hey… Nya?" he politely started.

"Oh, what is it Jay?" she smiled. She was happy that he seemed to listen to her. "Something up?"

Jay started sweating, "The uh… the… Festival of Lights is… uh tonight…" he swallowed. "I wanted to know if you'd like to go to the festival with me later?" He balanced himself on the balls of his feet. "In the uh… Imperial City…?"

Nya giggled, "I would love to! My parents took me once when I was very young to the city! Let me get changed!" she ran into her room quickly and Jay jumped for joy and quietly hooted to himself. He ran to change himself from his fighting suit. On his way by, his hand swiped over the fangs of the skeleton Nya dug up. A small puncture wound was close to bleeding.

He hissed in pain but brushed it off quickly, too excited for later. A drop of venom leaked out of the old fang and burned a hole in the table it was on.

"So… are we almost there?" Wu let out a breath. They had been walking for a long time. "It feels like we've been walking for days…"

"We probably have…" Garmadon nonchalantly said, still moving faster than the younger brother. Wu started to wonder if Garmadon even slept since the day he was banished.

"How old must you be by now?" Wu tiredly asked. "You're three years older than me…" he put a little more weight on his staff.

Garmadon rolled his eyes. He didn't want to have to talk with his annoying younger brother, he wanted to get his son and go away again "Fifty-two…" he finally answered just to be left alone for the rest of the walk. "Lloyd's twelve right? I was forty when he was born…" He scoffed, "Guess you forget after eight years of the banishment you put on me," he said with disdain.

Then there was a strange cackling sound that made both stop and looked around. "Cragglings?" Wu looked back.

"Yes..." Garmadon removed two swords from his sheaths and held them at ready, thankful for something else to do. "We'll have to fight our way through… and they do not relent…" he looked at Wu with a half concerned look. "Mind your feet… they go for that first…"

Wu's eyebrows went up in surprise but nodded. He took out a sword as well. Garmadon looked back at it. "The same sword you lost that put me in this cursed form…" he said with disgust. He was having second thoughts about not killing him again.

Wu looked back at the comment, "Just like old times?"

Garmadon shifted into a battle ready stance, remembering the Skulkin Wars when they fought side by side; "Just like old times…" he nodded back.

Jay had on a fancier looking pair of robes a set of bamboo wood sandals he saved for only the most special of occasions. The other three snickered as he walked by to Nya's room. "What's with the get up Mr. Fancy Trousers?" Cole folded his arms.

"I am going with Nya to Festival of Lights tonight," he ignored them and kept on walking, head held high.

"Well, sorry to spoil your fun… but we can't go into town for a party… Serpentine have been spotted there…" Kai frowned, looking back. He also was not entirely comfortable with Jay and his sister going out together by themselves.

Jay rolled his head back. That was the last thing he needed. He ignored that fact and decided that Nya should come along as well anyways. He knocked on her door. "Nya?"

The girl in red looked up and then through her mask and new bag of gold coins behind her shoji screen, knocking it over partially and then called, "Come in!"

"Did I hear something crash?"

"Nope!" She grinned tightly and ran behind her screen, straightening it out again. "I'm almost ready!" She took off her regular tunic and put on a lovely red kimono with pink and royal blue flower accents and cherry red ribbon in her black bobbed hair.

Jay's mouth dropped when he saw her give a small spin, even under the several layers of soft fabric, it still showed her narrow figure. She brought her hands together in the sleeves and her wood sandals clicked on the wood floor.

"Too much?" she looked down at her dress and twirled once more to show the royal blue and pink bow in the back.

"No way! You're beautiful!" Jay shook his head. She laughed, blushing.

The two walked out and Jay's nun chucks turned into his Pegasus. Nya smiled as Jay pulled her on and they headed for the Imperial City for the party together.

Most woman and children were stringing lanterns and lighting candles while most of the older men carted fireworks for the show later that night. "I always wanted to visit this city just for this festival again," Nya and Jay linked arms as they walked through. "My mother told me she use to come every year when she was young… she loved dancing on the stage… it's how she met my father actually…"

Jay smiled as he let Nya talk. It brought back wonderful memories for her and he was happy he invited her to come after all. Why he was so nervous to ask, he forgot why.

The other three ninja however were looking for their Serpentine, not really caring what Jay was doing at this point because he would ignore them or slow them down anyways.

They heard bickering in a storage house and peered inside. There Pythor was with some of his snakes, digging into the ground underneath ripped up floorboards. "It's here somewhere!" he hissed with delight.

The ninja opened the doors all the way with a loud 'thud'. Kai was the first to step up, an unhappy look on his face; sword of fire in his grasp.

"Not so fast!" Kai slowly said, igniting the gold weapon with flames.

The other two groaned. "Really?" Cole narrowed his eyes. Kai looked back at the comment.

Kai frowned under his hood, "I couldn't think of anything else on the fly like that," he looked around at the other two, blushing with a frown.

"I'm the leader, next time, leave this kind of stuff to me please?" the black ninja stepped forward, still looking back at Kai.

"Can we fight now?" one of the Constrictai with Pythor raised his hand.

Cole looked forward again at the snake and nodded, "Okay; now".

The Serpentine charged ahead at the three while Pythor kept digging.

"Jay; look! Snapdragons!" Nya ran over a kiosk with different colored flowers stalks. She was looking at a vase full of magenta and lavender colored ones

"Hehe, yea… I know they're you favorite… Ssnapdragonsss," Jay clapped a hand over his mouth. He had a slur to his speech. Like a snake.

"What was that Jay?" Nya smelled one and looked over with a bright smile.

"I sssaid nothing… eep!" he jumped. "I'll… be right back!" Jay quickly ran away, leaving Nya surprised.

Jay stared into a bucket of water, horrified. He had fangs! And he then noticed the sudden green tinge to his skin. And then he also remembered his parents when Fangtom bit them.

"Oh no! I'm turning into a sssnake!" Jay said, horrified. His nails were turning into black claws and then felt a tail forming under his robes. "Aw man…" he looked back, groaning.

**Jay's turn! :D Hahahaha wait till you see how I redid the whole "on a roller coaster about to die" thing...**

**I'm starting to post up to what I already reviewed... gaaaah I gotta go faster with rereading before I post them! **

**Thanks for reading! :)**

**~Mar**


	18. Festival of Fear

"Jay?!" Nya yelled, looking around to see where he ran off to. She folded her arms and frowned. "How unlike him…"

"Serpentine!" someone screamed. Nya's head snapped up and she ran around into an alley to change quickly, it was a good thing she through her kimono on over her shirt and tights. She went in bare foot though being she couldn't fit her boots in her small purse.

With Kai, Cole, and Zane tied up, Pythor showed them the fang blade he just dug up. "Three more and you are all doomed," he grinned.

The three young men struggled to break free but it was useless.

The door to storage house, that was now padlocked, broke down by the single kick of Nya's persona. "Ouch!" she quietly hissed, hopping on her good foot. She shook it off and drew her rapier and held it at ready. "Stand down Pythor".

"The Red Mask!" Cole's eyes widened. "We don't need a girl to save us!" he snapped at her.

Kai kept quiet because he knew who it really was underneath the red clothes. He smiled because it gave even more respect for his twin sister.

"Get her!" Pythor snapped at the others with him.

Nya's eyes widened as she tried to fight them off, trying to get to her brother and friends to cut them loose too. It would a much more fair fight, but fair wasn't in Pythor's vocabulary it seemed.

Jay had heard the woman scream 'Serpentine' as well and tried to hide his green skin that kept getting a darker shade and more scales were appearing on his face. People started noticing though and pointed and shouted at him.

"I'm a good guy you idiotssss!" he shouted at them, waving a clawed hand around. He squeaked when he saw his nails growing even longer.

Nya was dragged off to the roof where she was tied up. "When the rope breaks, you plummet to your death… a thank you for making a fool out of me twice," Pythor hissed. Nya squirmed uncomfortably but it was no good.

Pythor smirked and then ripped her mask off, "So… the ninja's little mascot…"

"SHUT UP!" she screamed and kicked her dangling legs against the top of the building, her bare feet scrapped against the wooden building.

"NYA!" She looked down.

Jay climbed up the side of the building to help her. He now liked the long claws to scale the wood building. The unstable roof was hard to fight on though. Pythor slammed his snake head staff into Jay's temple, making his head throb. He coiled his tail around the young man. Though the tail was not as strong as Skalidor's it was useful enough in incapacitate the weakest ninja.

Jay was seeing black spots and tried not to pass out but all the same, he was disabled now. "Ssstupid sssnake…" he hissed.

Pythor laughed, seeing the green scales on his face and neck, "Snake got your tongue?" he hung Jay right next to Nya just before his head could clear.

People screamed and fled after watching Jay on the rooftop. The streets were now almost empty as the two hung, ropes slowly tearing from their weight.

"Jay! You're face!" Nya gasped in shock. "What happened to you?"

"Fangpyre venom… and Fangtom'ssss not here with hisss anti-venom sssstaff," he hung his head, defeated. "Where's the Red Masssk when you need her?!" he looked around. "RED MASK?!"

"JAY!" Nya shouted at him.

"What?" he rolled his eyes; which seemed to look more red than blue.

"I don't know how to tell you this but…" she looked down at the cobblestoned street that would end their lives. What better time to tell him then now? "I'm her!" she bit her lip. "I'm the Red Mask!"

Jay's face was a mixture or excitement, shock, and something else she didn't know. "I KNEW IT!" he half yelled, half laughed at her. "From the moment at my parentsss' house when we all firssst met!" he was loudly said. "Remember? I ssspilled tea on mysself?" He then stopped and blinked for a moment, forgetting his excitement."WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL USSS!?"

"I don't know…" she closed her eyes, trying to forget about the heights. She heard the rope stretching; it wouldn't be much longer now. "I should have though… I did this like my mom and her mom and… it's my mother's legacy! It's all I have left of her…" she started crying. "She kept it a secret from my father because we can't let anyone know… my great grandma was locked up and hanged… granted she was more of a thief than an actual good guy and kept the money to herself-" her shoulders shook.

"Don't cry!" Jay frantically said. "It's okay! I jussst… that's really impresssive okay? You're ssso amazing and I'm nothing… I could barely get the Bounty to fly without your help… everything just… blowsss up in my face… just like what Garmadon said back when we fought him in the Underworld…"

"Not true…" she looked over at him. "You are amazing… you don't need to get things perfect all on you own the first time… Jay, you're special… you're a ninja!" she smiled. "No one can be you better…" she smiled wide. "You are the best you…" She craned her neck over and kissed his cheek.

Jay's heartbeat quickened when she did that and like magic his green skin and fangs and tail and claws left him. "Of course…" Nya whispered. "A jolt… a surprise to the body can undo it!" she kissed his cheek again happily. And Jay turned his head and their lips pressed against each other a couple more quick kisses.

But something more happened to the blue ninja when their lips pressed together one last time; his glowed in a white blue light that almost blinded Nya. He broke free of his ropes and broke Nya out too, holding her.

The two glided down and returned to normal. "My full potential…" he looked at Nya and wrapped her in a big, tight hug and he kissed the top of her head.

The two ran inside and cut the ropes of the other three. Pythor and the ones with him were long gone now with the fang blade.

"Wait so Nya is the Red Mask!?" Cole and Zane said in shock when Nya and Jay explained it.

"I already knew," Kai raised his hand. "Guess I'm the green ninja!" he laughed.

Nya rolled her eyes. "Please, that has nothing to do with anything Kai… you are so immature," she folded her arms.

It was getting dark out now and the city was lighting up with the lanterns again as people came out when they saw it was finally safe. Over head was booms of fireworks and everyone looked up at the explosions of red, pink, green, gold, silver and blue.

"No matter what you are… a… secret vigilante… or…a snake… anything; you need to be yourself…" Jay smiled, looking at the flashes in the sky. "That's what I learned… no one can be a better you…"

"Cute but there is only one thing I'm concerned about…" Cole sighed. "Pythor has the first blade…"

**Thanks for reading! :D **

**~Mar**


	19. The Blade Cup

Lloyd cautiously looked up at Pythor when his ropes were cut from his small body. "You're letting me go?" he blinked and looked back down the strange mineshaft.

The Anacondrai's tail swished back and forth, "First you will get the fang blade… and then I might let you go…" he frowned at the prince darkly.

Lloyd looked nervously down the old tunnel. It was an old mining facility in the mountains and looked like there were traps too by whoever hid the fang blade there.

The prince swallowed hard and started running as fast as he could. Plates beneath his feet activated darts that shot out at him. "AH!" Lloyd screamed but kept running. A couple darts slashed small holes in his green robes and then the floor started giving out behind him.

He dived through the other entrance into a roll, and landed upright on his butt, legs stretched out in front of him. Lloyd groaned, rubbing his tailbone and looked up. "The blade is gone!" he shouted back when he saw the barren pedestal.

"WHAT!?" Pythor yelled back, furious.

"Do I still get to be free!?" Lloyd whined.

"NO!"

"So… remind me why we're in the valley again? I thought we had to look for more fang blades?" Cole looked around, almost nervously, hands fidgeting together with his shirt front. "I became a ninja to get away from here…"

Not much had changed since their last visit. The green grass rolled in the warming wind and the villagers were milling about working or talking with one another. Many waved to Kai, Jay, Nya, and Cole as they passed by on the trails.

The others seemed to be happy to be in the serene and cheerful place but Cole was not at all. He planned to stay hidden behind his four friends for their whole time in the village, constantly looking over his shoulder.

"Come on Cole," Kai rolled his eyes. "Jay, Nya, and I promised we'd visit our families… just because you don't want doesn't mean you get to ruin the trip… I'm sure Daisie and Ed and Edna wanna see you…"

"Yes don't you wish to see your own anyway?" Zane asked.

Nya smiled, "That's right! You lived with your dad, sisters, and brother… right?"

Cole hung his head, "About that… I'm not too thrilled to see them again…" he finally admitted, still scanning the area for any sign of them. "Cameron and Camilla are great... love em to death… but… it's my dad and sis… in fact… it's late winter, beginnings of spring… I think they may be at our aunt's house for a while…" He was relieved to have one of the two he didn't like out.

"Well, too bad either way, we're here and Kai's cousin's been begging for a visit…" Jay kept walking. "She's a nice enough lady and I'm sure she'll be happy to see you just like Kai said." He always liked Daisie and would be happy to see meet her again. The woman became like family to all of them.

Cole sighed and looked up from his walking feet. "Wait a minute…" he was looking at a sign hanging on the side of a cluster of shops. "Guys…" he stopped. "I thought I remembered seeing a fang blade somewhere before!"

"Where?!" The others jumped and turned around, forgetting about their family visit.

Cole folded his arms, "Remember that talent competition we have every year?" he looked over at the others ahead of him.

"Oh yea!" Nya walked over and looked, "I remember! When I was little my mom and I played a song together for it, we didn't win though… I remember this really dorky kid though trying to that "Triple Tiger Sashay" and tripping it up". She laughed, looking back at Cole, "Remember that year?"

Cole was shrinking down below his black jacket collar and turning red. Nya slowly stopped laughing when she made the connection. Kai and Jay looked at the black ninja. Zane stood clueless.

"That was you!?" their mouths dropped together, except Zane. Sometimes the white ninja felt left out because the other four all knew each other since they were children.

Cole kept his head down. "Never mind… the last holder of that blade cup… was my father who won last year… it's made with a fang blade by that great explorer… Clutch Powers".

The other four glanced at Cole with grins starting on their faces. "Oh no… no no no… we are _not _going to my dad's house!"

The others looked at each other with a frown, "Hey; we can spread around how the great earth ninja was bad dancer or something…" Kai mouth twitched in a smirk.

Cole kept his head down as he led the way to his old house. He walked slowly, not wanting to be in a hurry but the other four ran ahead of him, pretty much forcing him to keep up.

He looked up and down at the wooden door to the place he once called home. "Do we have to?" He looked back. Everyone else nodded.

He sucked in a breath before knocking. "Now remember… no one says we're ninja… remember what sensei said about keeping it under wraps?" The others nodded and so Cole knocked.

At first no one answered and Cole seemed relieved and readied to leave the doorstep when the old door swung open and a man that Cole looked almost identical to, except Cole's skin was darker, stood there in the doorway.

"Uh… hey dad," Cole tried to grin like he was happy but really, he just wasn't. He looked more nervous than anything.

"No word from you in over a month and now you just show up?" He sounded almost mad.

"I-uh… I'm here about…" Cole rolled his head back. "It's about the talent show…" he finally said with a long sigh.

His father seemed to instantly forget about Cole not writing because he invited him inside, "Come on in son," he smiled and looked behind the taller one. "Who are your friends? Never mind, come in, all of you." He seemed more cheery at the mention of the talent show.

The house was rather big and the ninja and Nya sat on floor cushions. "I'm Louis, Cole's father… So, you're his friends?"

"Yea," Kai answered. "Actually, we're Kai and Nya Blackman? From the blacksmith shop?"

"Ah yes, I remember you two… Daisie been fine in case you've been worrying. Nice girl. You're lucky to have her".

"We sure are," Nya smiled in agreement.

"And it's me, Jay Walker?" Jay grinned. "My mom said that you guys knew each other from years ago…"

"Yes I remember Ed and Edna. Hard people to forget…" he nodded. "Now," the older man sat down, "What was it you came for exactly now? You said about the talent show."

"Dad, we need to look at the Blade Cup… you won last year… where is it?" Cole looked around the dining room for the silver and bronze cup that had been in the house more than a few times over the years.

"Well, that would be tricky… you see, I gave it back because this year's competition is tomorrow night," he frowned. "Why did you need to see it may I ask?"

Everyone glanced at each other then at Cole. "Well, uh… we're studying history of our home towns… we all live at the palace see and this is a part of our studies". He covered it up quickly before someone else would say something stupid.

"And I was planning on trying to win it back again this year but, you remember the little accident two months ago?" he tapped his foot with his cane and Cole bit his lip.

"Well, how can we get our hands on it?" Jay raised an eyebrow.

"You cannot just get your hands on it… you need to win to get the trophy".

Nya looked at the others and shook her head, "You can leave me out of this one guys, I don't do well in front of audiences anymore". She put her hands up.

The four looked at one another and Cole let out a small groan. He really did not want to do this but he knew the other three wouldn't do the show without him and if they wanted to get the fang blade, they'd need to win the trophy.

Nya folded her arms and watched the boys try and dance but kept laughing as one accidently smacked into the other or tripped. They were skilled fighters, but they all different in stances and speed, so they didn't make such a good dance troop.

"We need you, come on Nya!" Jay invited her over. Ever since they kissed two days ago, the two seemed even closer than before.

She shook her head yet again, "No guys! You have fun making yourselves look stupid…" she leaned against the side of the building, lightly laughing. "I'm gonna go visit Daisie, see ya later". She walked off, waving behind her back.

Two serpentine slithered along the trail outside the city and one, a short Constrictai, ran over to the barn side and read the poster aloud. "A singing contest! I like singing!" he clapped with hop.

"Snappa you idiot!" a Venomari hissed, "Look what's on the poster!" he smacked the other in the head and pointed to the painting on it.

Snappa blinked and saw what his friend was looking at. "AH! The fang blade! That's what Pythor's looking for!" he hopped more. "What now Hissa?"

Hissa grinned, "I have a perfect idea…" he rubbed his green claws together with a smirk. "But come on, we gotta tell Pythor this first!" The two ran back from the way they came.

**Haha my friend Soki on DA was very excited for this chapter set lol. Yes she is a fabulous Cole fan XD **

**Thanks for reading though! **

**~Mar**


	20. Dirty Dancing

"I think we're hopeless," Cole sat down and grumbled.

His dad walked out and heard him say that, "You're only hopeless because you still dwell on that ridiculous display you made of yourself when you were a child!"

"I was seven!" Cole stood up and growled. The other three ninja shrank back and decided to stay out of this one and let their great leader handle it. "Mom was even mad at you for making me do it!"

"She treated you like a little girl," Louis folded his arms. "How can you ever learn if you don't try?"

Cole glared down at the ground and then turned back, "Come on guys… let's go find Nya…" he started walking off with his friends close behind.

"So how are we going to do this?" Zane asked.

"I have an idea… though… my father can't find out okay?" Cole side glanced at the light blonde ninja with a bit of a devious grin.

The four huddled shoulder to shoulder, keeping their voices low as they walked down the trail to Kai's house, explaining the plan as they went.

The following night, the only reason the four practiced was to make it look like that's what their plan was for grabbing the blade cup so Cole's father wouldn't get suspicious. In fact, not even Nya knew of their plan.

"See you guys after the show…" Nya quietly said before she left from behind the stage that was set up for the show in the town square. She took her seat in front next to her cousin, Jay's parents, and her two friends, Ange and Marty.

The ninja were to be the last to go up so they peeked from behind the stage to watch the rest of the town file in. Before the show began the three judges filed in and took a seat.

The four looked in shock at who was the third judge and was equally surprised no one noticed who it was yet.

"Pythor…" they narrowed their eyes angrily at the Serpentine.

"How did he get in?" Kai clicked his teeth in disgust to the Anacondrai with nothing more than a fake beard on for a disguise.

After the three took their seats, the blade cup was also brought out by two of the stage hands; the fang blade sticking out of the top just like on the poster Cole spotted the other day.

They paid close attention as the entries as they came up. Why didn't Pythor just take the blade and disappear? They could just take it and the people would be powerless to stop him. All they noticed was that he was giving incredibly low scores to all the entries.

Their question of what he was planning was answered when the second to last entry came on stage. "Are you serious?" Kai's mouth dropped.

A Fangpyre, Hypnobrai, Constricti, and a Venomari, were on stage trying to look human but failed miserably to their eyes. They sung up and off key in their slurred speech which made everyone else cringe upon hearing.

The first two judges gave them a six each, though the ninja would have given them a negative twenty, while Pythor gave a ten. Looking over at the other two he hissed angrily and they flipped the boards upside down to give them both nines.

"That's it, let's just take that thing! I am so sick of dancing and performing and I just want to get out of here as soon as possible! I just do not like my dad! Okay guys? I really don't!" Cole started seething with anger. "I can't go on that stage and look like an idiot again like when I was seven! He is the most embarrassing, annoying and indignant and… meanest person in the world!"

"What?"

Cole's heart stopped and he turned around. Zane, Kai, and Jay all started backing away from the two. "Dad… I uh…"

"You… hate me?" Cole's eyes widened.

"Dad I-"

"And you planned to steal the cup?" The other three started stepping back a little ways. Louis scared them to be honest.

"Okay yes!" Cole admitted. "You wanna know why?" he clenched his teeth. He used Spinjitsu and turned into his black ninja suit. His dad stepped back in surprise. "I didn't leave for performing and all of that garbage stuff you like! I went to save the world! And that's what I'm doing right now! And I 'hate' you for pushing me around and never really caring about me! Only Colette! Not even Cameron and Camilla!"

His father remained silent with an unhappy as Cole growled at him.

"Those Serpentine are bad, and we plan on stealing that fang blade before they can! I know this is a lot, but I'm proud of who I am… and I want you to be proud of me too". He looked his father in the eye.

"I cannot be proud of someone who thinks stealing is right," he walked off. "I am not proud to be your father… you take our history and tarnish it… how dare you say any of those things to me because I am not proud of you at all now…"

"Dad…" Cole whispered as the older man stalked off. He didn't cry but a pain stabbed his heart. Why did the rejection hurt? He should be used to it by now, but still…

"Don't worry about him; let's just get this over with…" Jay put a hand on the taller ninja's shoulder. Cole looked back at them. His friends were ready to steal the blade cup for him and that meant the world to him as their leader.

Cole sighed, "I appreciate you guys having my back like this but… No…" they looked at him in surprise, "We're going to win this… the right way," He started walking out. "Just like what my father meant".

"I hope this isn't something we are going to regret," Zane quietly said to Kai as they followed their leader.

The four filed on the stage and were ready to win that fang blade. They stood in their ninja suits and the little band that was playing when Cole nodded.

"Who are they? You know them?" Ange elbowed Nya in the audience. "I thought the last performers were Kai and his friends".

"Is that Kai and the others?" Marty raised an eyebrow, squinting to try and see their faces under the hoods they wore.

"Oh uh…" Nya's eyebrows rose looking at her brother and friends. What were they up to now?

"This is the last group right? Where's Kai?" their other old neighbor, Julia, noticed.

"Not here… they uh… went back home, they were not feeling well? And this is a late entry…?" Nya covered up for them. Daisie, Ed, and Edna looked over at the conversation, knowing the four boys needed to keep some kind of cover.

"They're pretty good," Nya's other old friend, Merriam, noticed.

Pythor looked back at the people in back and saw they were loving them. He looked at his snakes in back and gave a small nodded.

The Serpentine tore off their bad disguises and tried to attack the ninja right on stage. Most of the audience were surprised and started pointing to the snakes sneaking up behind the four.

"Company!" Kai looked back, he threw a punch in back and the four used their Spinjitsu to throw their enemies off guard.

Jay dive rolled, kicking two of the four and Zane high kicked the Venomari.

Finally Cole ran and jumped into a flip, kicking off the first, punching the second as her rounded over and his head landed on the third, completing the flip and landing firmly on his two feet.

Everyone stopped and gasped.

Cole stood upright and realized what he had just done.

"Cole! That was the Triple Tiger Sashay!" Zane pointed to the earth ninja.

Everyone clapped and the two judges gave them both a ten. Pythor deviously smiled and gave them a zero.

Then he felt something come up his throat and the hand of the original judge wrote in a one next to the zero. "I didn't write that!" Pythor looked completely shocked.

"WOO HOO!" Jay shouted, grabbing his friends in the crook of his arms and laughed, keeping their masks up still so the other wouldn't tell it was really them.

Backstage they held their new trophy proudly, laughing and hooting with one another; all except for Cole. He looked around and he never saw his father in the audience.

"I just wish my father could have seen that… I wish he knew how sorry I was…"

"I do…"

The black haired teen looked up and smiled, seeing his dad walking out. He ran to hug him. "Dad…" he never wanted to hug his dad like that in all his life. Maybe now they understood one another. "You're not mad?"

"How can I be," he looked up at his taller son. "I saw my son do what was right instead of choosing the quick way out and stealing… you stopped those serpentine from getting the blade, and I'm proud of you."

Cole's mouth dropped. "I… I never heard you tell me that before…" he looked down.

"Maybe I was too harsh… maybe you were a bit right about that… your mother was good to you… I wish she could be here now to see how much you have grown up…"

Cole picked his dad up and squeezed him.

"Oh how touching…" everyone turned around. Pythor and more snakes were surrounding the ninja. "Sorry to cut things short…" he looked up. Some of his minions had created a sort of pulley system that lifted up heavy crates. It was over Cole's head.

Pythor cut the rope and the crate fell.

Cole shoved his dad out of the way and the crates landed on him instead.

"COLE!" Everyone screamed in unison.

Nya ran around the back when the crate landed, Daisie was with her who screamed as Pythor made off with the trophy and saw what had happened. "What happened?!" Nya frantically asked. "Where's Cole!?" her eyes landed on the pile of broken wooden and rope.

The other four sank to their knees, starting to cry for their friend. "No way anyone could survive that!" Kai and Jay wiped his eyes.

"You jerk! Why'd you have to die like that!?" Kai growled.

Then they saw a glowing from underneath. The golden scythe Cole had dropped when shoving Louis out of the way was glowing. "Wait… what's that?" Kai pointed.

From the pile of wreckage Cole came out, glowing a black-gray color with magenta around the eyes. "COLE!" they all shouted, relieved, and happy to see he was fine.

"You unlocked your full potential! Your father must have sealed the emotional hole that was holding you back!"

Cole panted and swallowed while nodding. "What happened?" he blinked, shaking his head.

"We're all okay son…" his dad put a hand on his shoulder.

Nya and the ninja were invited over to the house and talked about everything that happened. Kai was agitated though because he was the only one who had not gained his full potential and felt very left out as Cole, Jay, and Zane excitedly talked about how the new powers felt.

"It's no trophy…" Louis opened a wall scroll and hung it up. "But it will still look nice on my wall…" It was a quick ink painting of the four together. "You all did good… now; you can stop those bad snakes…"

**Been less motivated to write... IDK why... I actually have been writing original stuff... yea I wanna get it published one day XP **

**Haha... sooooooo... oh joy Garmadon's gonna hang with the ninja next chap! hahah that'll be fun right?**

**So thank you very much for reading :) **

**~Mar**


	21. My Enemy is my Shipmate

Garmadon climbed to the top of the mountain first, Wu not far behind him. The two brothers stood together, Wu's eyes directed down like his older brother's.

"Here we are…" Garmadon gestured.

Wu swallowed looking at the swirling pale blue portal in the crater in the top of the mountain, "You are sure now this will work?"

"Of course brother… don't you trust me?" Garmadon gave a dishonest smirk that made Wu narrow his blue eyes.

They stood on the edge and then Garmadon looked over and then shoved his brother forward and laughed. Wu tried to hang onto the edge of the crater but Garmadon kicked his hand off.

He waited another moment before jumping down himself. If he wasn't going to kill his brother, then scaring the living day lights out of him would just have to suffice.

The sky looked dark as Garmadon stepped back through into the land of the living. People screamed and fled upon his return. "Ah Ninjago…" he looked around. "Can't say I missed you… but your rightful king is back," he folded his two sets arms.

Misako heard the echoing laugh and a boom of thunder and sat upright. "Oh what is happening now?" she looked out from the side of the cave and then realized what happened. She hid more of her face in, scared that the brothers would see her, though at the same time, she knew they couldn't.

"Great; now _he's_ back…" he hand clutched the white fabric over her chest. She didn't want to see him again so soon but she also did wish for his company again.

Her green eyes followed the two as they walked by on the trail below; she knew they were going back to the ninja and her son. Now that she thought about it; she watched over those ninja for a while now. Lloyd seemed quite out of the group and, in fact, hadn't seen him at all the past couple of weeks.

And then she put two and two together. There would be only one reason her husband would return with his brother:

Lloyd had to be in trouble.

"SENSEI'S BACK!" Nya leaned over the balcony of the deck with a wide, excited grin. She quickly stepped down the wooden steps, repeating it with a bit of a hop.

"SENSEI!" The four yelled with excitement as they went to greet him with Nya.

Then they saw the shadowy figure of their biggest enemy coming up from behind. "WATCH OUT!" The four sprung into action, each holding on to one of his four arms back. Garmadon looked down at the four, a bit surprised.

"ENOUGH!" Wu yelled and the boys went silent. "I wanted him to come back here!" He looked tired and was not in the mood for any misbehaving.

Garmadon shook his arms loose from the four. "Honestly you four have no manners… what have your parents been teaching you? They seemed respectful when I knew them…" Garmadon held his head high and walked past him, readjusting the silver gauntlets around his wrists.

"He is still my brother no matter what he has done… treat him with respect while he is here!" Wu pointed a finger at all of them. "He is still a prince of Ninjago and your superior".

"But… but why should we!? He tried to kill us and you told we had to end him a month ago! Now you want us to treat him like he's a good guy?!" Kai shouted angrily back. "Why is he even here?!"

Garmadon turned around, "Can't a dark ruler care about his only son?" Kai blinked and looked back at the others. "You four seem to do a lousy job of looking after my boy, so I was brought in to get the job done since it seems you all are great failures at that". He insulted them. "You couldn't even stop me so I would shut your mouth Blackman".

They four stayed back, they wanted to avoid this whole situation, living with the man who tried to kill them recently? No chance Kai would put up with that.

The deal breaker that made the boys most unhappy was that he would have to sleep in the room they shared if their quest would go on for several days.

Kai was turning in early for the evening but the others were up and awake. Nya, Zane, and Jay had re worked the falcon so that whatever the falcon could see, Zane could see too. It fascinated Nya greatly and she longed to meet the man that had created their robotic friend. Zane himself was a technological enigma to her as well.

Cole was in town doing a sky patrol with his gryphon, Squawky, and wouldn't be back till late. All that was on Kai's mind was the fact that the enemy was probably sitting in his bedroom, why he couldn't unlock his full potential, and where Pythor and the last two fang blades were.

He walked past Nya's room and heard Wu was in there speaking to her. "Nya… stand near the weapons," Kai pressed his ear to the door.

"Okay… but why your highness?" Nya curiously asked him.

Wu paused for a moment, "I was a fool to discount you being the green ninja…"

Kai stepped back, shocked. He then backed into someone taller and he knew it was not, and could not be Cole. He half sighed, half groaned.

"Watch where you're going you brat…"

Kai grimaced at the insult and turned around, arms folded, "What do you want Garmadon? This is my home and I can walk where I please".

"Well mister snoopy trousers… why do you care so much about the green ninja?" the dark lord leaned down. He was more than a foot taller than Kai.

"Kai?" Nya stuck her head out. "Were you spying?" Wu also looked out from inside her room.

"So what if I am?" he looked away and then back. "Are… you the green ninja?"

"What!?" she blinked. "Of course not! And I never wanted to be… seeing how the four of you tried a competition to find out the Red Mask was me… you all acted so ridiculous" she sighed. "Whatever though…" Wu and Nya walked past the two to above deck.

"So… you want to be the green ninja so you know it's by your hand I'll die right?" Garmadon looked down at Kai who swallowed.

Kai bit the inside of his cheek, "None of your business…" he shoved past the four armed man and went into his room to rest.

He didn't get to sleep though because Cole had returned. Pythor was at the Fire Temple for the next blade. The fire ninja tiredly got back up and the Bounty set sail for the place he had fond memories of with his dragon.

Kai felt a pain hit his chest when he thought about his missing dragon. Too much had changed in a short amount of time, about three weeks to be exact since everything hit the wall for the small team.

Landing near the mountain, Wu and his team left their ship hidden in the threes and started to the temple for the fang blade, and Lloyd.

"Now remember, Kai, do not use your fire sword, it could set off a volcanic reaction and put everyone in danger…" Wu looked back at the red ninja.

"Sure sure sir…" Kai sighed. He was a samurai and a ninja, he needed his sword. What was he good for without it? He sheathed it half heartedly.

Through the unguarded wood gates they slipped into the shadows and watched the snakes digging into the dirt around the lave pools. Things had drastically changed since last Kai had been inside there.

It was so hot, everyone was not happy. Sweat ran down their faces and the ninja through off their hoods to breathe better. "Here's the plan… Kai, Jay, and Zane will distract the minions… I'll take on Pythor and sensei and Garmadon can get Lloyd out…" Cole pointed to Lloyd, crying in his cage.

"Lloyd…" Garmadon looked over the side. All his mind was set on was to tear Pythor a part limb from limb, "You can count on me," he growled.

"One… two… three… now," Wu said.

The blue, red, and white ninjas crawled down the side and landed on their feet and took their weapons out. Most of the minions started attacking the three and Cole then moved around in the shadows to tackle Pythor from behind. The Anacondrai turned invisible and Cole tried to slug the snake in the face, failing.

"GET THE BOY OUT OF HERE!" Pythor angrily ordered and four snakes started carrying the prince out when he saw Garmadon.

"LLOYD!" Garmadon shouted.

Lloyd perked up in his cage upon hearing the familiar voice and sat up on his knees. Then he saw his father above him. "DADDY!" he shouted, sticking a hand out through the bars, reaching out.

Wu was running ahead of the older brother and finally, Garmadon shoved his younger brother out of the way and started down by himself, determined to throw every one of those snakes into the lava around them for taking his son away and no doubt torturing him.

Kai himself ignited his sword and the volcano rumbled and the ground shook, more lava pooling into the already too hot cavern. "KAI BE CAREFUL!" Cole shouted, getting thrown off Pythor's back, almost into the lava. "Hot hot hot!" he shouted, getting to his feet.

"SORRY!" Kai put the sword back.

Pythor spied a silver glint in the red clay underfoot and slithered quickly to swipe the fang blade before the ninja could. Kai saw it too and ran to grab it from him, leaving Zane and Jay to handle the minions themselves.

On the other end, Garmadon charged at the current mutual enemy of his foes and grabbed one of their staffs right from their hands and slung it around, knocking the snakes off the ledge or into rocks and they fought on. Lloyd finally mustered enough strength to kick a pair of bars to the point of cracking and wedged two out, his small body slipping through.

Garmadon scooped him up and hugged him tightly. "I have you Lloyd…" he whispered. "I'm not letting you go again… You'll come with me… after this… I'll protect you…"

Lloyd squeezed his eyes shut and rested his chin on his father's shoulder. "I'm sorry dad!" he started crying.

"You didn't mean it… I know…"

He turned around and saw Pythor coming up their way. He set Lloyd down. Kai tackled Pythor first, reaching for the fang blade. "GIVE ME THAT FANG BLADE!" Kai growled. "I'll prove I'm the green ninja!" he shouted, trying to choke Pythor viciously.

Behind Garmadon, Lloyd tripped over the edge onto a rock below, it broke off. The young boy started freaking out even more, being so close the lava. Pythor had dropped the blade and it landed dangerously close to the edge as well.

"KAI COME ON!"Jay and the others started running out. "WE CAN'T BE HERE ANYMORE!" They felt the place shaking more.

Pythor was retreating with his men too. The Volcano was erupting and it was Kai's fault.

Wu ordered them to leave as well and Garmadon refused too. "NOT WITHOUT MY SON!"

"Zane! Cole! Grab him!" the king pointed at his older brother with a heavy heart. The white and black ninja did so though the dark lord put up one hell of a fight, shouting at them and threatening them the whole way.

Kai ignored his orders though. He climbed down, trying to reach the blade. Then he heard Lloyd's cries and looked at the blonde boy. "KAI!" he reached a hand out.

Kai's dark brown eyes widened but he looked back down at the blade he wanted to prove he would be the legendary ninja to save the world and to do it he'd need the fang blade.

"PLEASE! KAI!"

The red ninja looked up angrily. He wanted to be the one who would be the hero. He worked hard enough, endured enough. It was Lloyd's fault they were in this mess so why should he help the brat now? He thought about leaving him, oh how he thought about leaving him.

He looked back again at the boy's filthy face with tears running down his cheeks. The red ninja then saw the apology in the prince's bloodshot, emerald eyes. That had done it.

He remembered back to the days upon meeting the child when he stayed with him and how his eyes looked innocent and happy when Nya offered to spend the day with him. How sweet he was when he asked Zane if he could ride with the fire ninja back to his home.

He was a samurai to Lloyd before he was a ninja to the world. He held his breath and jumped.

**I know you guys must be all like "Wait, no funny montage?" And sorry to say I couldn't find the right way to write something like that. **

**Ignoring my love for comedy, I wanted this to more of a serious chapter, especially since this is one of Kai's two part Full Potential chapters. Plus, the next chapter, Kai share's the lime light with Lloyd a little. **

**This chap was a doozy wasn't it though? One of my longer ones... had to cover a bit didn't I?**

**Happy to see people enjoying this though :) I work so hard on this one...**

**And in other news... I deleted Cursed Bloodline because **

**I am trying to find a more balance... of doing OC incorperated stories (ie the stories with Lloyd's sibs and and characters like Misty and stuff)**

**I am just really bored with writing it and I will pry NEVER finish it, so I canceled it. Not many people were into it anyways so no harm no foul...**

**So yep! And since I'm almost done with Frozane (still on that last chapter!) I'm gonna start posting Simple Things which is a stand alone multi chapter that will NOT be tied to ANY story I have published. So have no fear, I will continue my timeline set and Seven Sins will be by far the best of the series I have written for. I just want to balance out some stuff... I don't want to write purely about stories with OCs**

**I also am writing a story about not only Garmadon, Misako, and Wu, it's a back story like Their Past Their Story, only more to the cannon line of the series and I am incorporating many of the characters in the comics like Stone Cold. **

**In this, there are NO CASTERS, Delilah will keep her name, she will just have knowledge of Spinjitsu, she is purely human. In this story, Kai and Nya's parents are Kasai and Namiko, and I am incorporating the Phantom Ninja idea, and his name is Tanaka (this name has special meaning for my brother and I anyways XD) So those last three are more or less "Half OCs" because they existed, I just give more life to them, same with Delilah.**

**It will be called "The First Masters of Spinjitsu" and it more about them as a team and not just pure focus on the Golden Trio as I like to call them...**

**Sorry, that was long wasn't it? Anyways, thanks for reading!**

**~Mar**


	22. Green

Kai wrapped his arms around the boy and picked him up with one arm. "I'm sorry…" Lloyd sniffed, looking down at the lava pools bubbling more and more.

"Not your fault… I was being stupid…" the older teen held on to Lloyd, making sure he wouldn't let go of him again. He sheathed his gold sword and held onto Lloyd with both hands. He didn't want to make their deaths happen any quicker.

"Now what?" Lloyd choked on his tears, gripping Kai's arm through the red fabric so tightly Kai started feeling pain. "We're gonna be okay right? We… we're always okay…"

The brown eyed ninja scanned the room and looked for a way out. He heard the rumbling of the volcano about to erupt and closed his eyes. "There is no 'now what'… there is no escape…" Lloyd looked up, scared. "This is all my fault…" he said, defeated. He squeezed the prince tightly and shut his eyes. "Forgive me Lloyd…"

"I forgive you Kai…" he buried his face in the red robes, ready to die with his friend. "Thanks for taking care of me and coming back for me in the end…"

Garmadon's bottom hands clung to the railing on the Bounty. Heart beating quickly as he hoped his son would be okay. Though he had more doubt than hope. He knew that everything good in his life was ripping away from him slowly to make it more painful;

The woman he loved more than anything, the brother who stole his crown, and now the hard earned son he thought would save him from a poisoned heart and a cursed body.

The lava flowed from the mouth of the temple which lit up in flames and that broke him. He couldn't bear to keep his eyes open any longer and kept his back turned to his brother and pupils. His son was dead.

Nya though, was right there at the railing too. "KAI!" she screamed, tears leaking down her face as she sobbed. She knew too that he did not make it out, being the ninja of fire wouldn't save him this time, and would have to tell Daisie he died trying to save the world.

Wu lowered his head, saddened by a double loss; the prince and the samurai.

Zane looked at the mouth of the volcano while everyone else squeezed their eyes shut with tears, "Wait… what is that?" he ran to the edge of the ship, next to Nya. "LOOK!" He pointed out, shaking her shoulder quickly.

A glowing red light shot from the mouth and was coming towards them. It landed on their deck and the glow died down to reveal Kai holding onto Lloyd. "Kai!" Nya squeezed him tightly.

"LLOYD!" Garmadon picked the boy up, kissing the top of his head. The blonde was dizzily looking around. He remembered intense heat and all of a sudden he was here.

Everyone looked at Kai who smiled at the prince, but then collapsed due to exhaustion. "He unlocked his full potential…" Jay realized.

When Kai woke up he was on the main deck where the steering instruments were located. He lifted his head off the floor but his head hurt so he put it back down. "What happened Kai?" Zane asked.

"Yea! How did you do it!?" Cole's voice came next.

The red ninja's head spun still from the extreme heat he just endured. Nya offered him a cup of water which he gladly took when she helped him sit up.

After a few gulps he felt he could talk again, "I thought that I would have to prove I was born to be the green ninja… when in reality… I was born to save him…" he looked at Lloyd.

All eyes were on the young boy now and Lloyd blinked. "What?" he looked around. "Why is everyone looking at me?" the light from the sun caught his green eyes to reveal a flash of gold and everyone still had eyes locked on him.

"I don't believe it…" Garmadon took a step back from him.

Wu's face looked grim and Nya, the other three ninja, and Lloyd were completely lost. Jay and Zane held the gold weapons around Lloyd. They started glowing and a gold glint in Lloyd's eyes turned them gold.

"His mother was right… he is the green ninja…" Wu darkly said.

"No…" Garmadon shook his head slowly. "It can't be!" Grief washed over him. "She was lying! She had to be lying…"

Nya covered her mouth, "That means… Lloyd's gonna to have to kill you…" tears pricked her eyes too because she genuinely felt terrible.

Lloyd's heart stopped when he heard her say that. "NO" he shouted. "I WON'T!" he shook his furiously. "YOU CANNOT MAKE ME!" He stomped, throwing a tantrum.

"No… it… it is for the best…" Garmadon whispered. "I should leave… now…" the dark lord stepped back farther.

Lloyd, however, ran up and hugged him tightly, "I love you dad…" he started crying again.

"What of the fang blade?" Wu whispered to Kai.

"Lost… at least Pythor won't get to it…" Kai answered back, looking out the window at the smoking Fire Temple.

Pythor moved down the steps when he saw the silver glint in the molten red river. He grinned. Using the bottom end of his staff, he flipped the blade out of the small lava river and picked it up carefully. "We have our victory!" he raised it high.

The others cheered.

"You're leaving then…" Lloyd quietly said, walking in on his father sheathing a sword.

Garmadon sighed and turned around, "You have a choice I never had… don't choose what I did… don't corrupt yourself for my sake…" he held a hand out to his son to not come any closer. Lloyd kept his distance.

"What do you mean?" Lloyd eyes started welling up with tears. "You said I could come with you… you said you would never leave me behind again and would protect me!"

"You listen, and listen well," Garmadon looked down with a grim look, "I had no choice for my own fate… I can't ruin your life like… I ruined your mother's life…"

"Is that why she left you?" Lloyd coldly said.

The dark lord held his forehead, he couldn't believe his son who barely knew him or anything about their life, was purposely trying to put the guilt on him. "She left for her own reasons…" he set his teeth together.

"Because she didn't want me…" Lloyd narrowed his wide eyes. "Right? You know it…" His small hands were clenched into fists, pulling at his shirt. "I remember… hearing her voice…" he looked down. "I may have been five but I remember… she told me to walk up to the gates of the castle, and I would be fine… safe… and I never saw her again…" he swallowed. "I can't even remember what she looked like…"

"She left because there was no other choice she could make I'm sure... I couldn't come back to the light to be with her… and she couldn't live in shadows with me. And she loved you more than anything else in this world… when she found out we would have you… you made us so happy…"

"Where… where is my mother?" Lloyd dared to ask. The young tween glanced up, chin lowered. "I know you know where she is…"

"Don't doubt her love for you… when you were born… it was a hard time for us… a very hard time…" Garmadon quietly said. "When we heard your first cries… that was the first time either of us had smiled in a very long time…"

"Just take me with you," the prince pleaded.

"You have the chance of a lifetime to be a hero and to do something good for your kingdom… You'll be king when you've become of age Lloyd…" Garmadon walked out. "Now… keep being a good boy for your uncle and guardians… I trust them enough to keep you safe from now on… I was brought in to save you and now you are safe…"

"I want make own decisions! I wanna be like you!" Lloyd shouted. Garmadon flinched.

"Stop, just stop…" Garmadon held his hands out. "Don't say that because you do not want to be like me…"

Lloyd sucked in a breath, "No… you're right… I don't…" Garmadon seemed relieved at first but then Lloyd continued, "What person leaves behind the people they love?! Who would selfishly put himself first!? I don't want to be like _that_…" Lloyd nodded in understanding, "I will never be like you… you are right… I'm not selfish…"

Garmadon kept walking after Lloyd shouted that to him. When he walked around the corner, Lloyd followed to find he had disappeared. "Bye dad… when we meet… I don't want to hurt you…" He let a tear slip admitting that to silence.

**Uggggggggh, do you know how hard it is to write conversations with tension** **with good arguments?** **Ya, I hate it most days XP **

**Sooooooooo... thank you kindly for reading C:**

**So... haven't asked anything in a while, what do you think of my full potential chapters compared to the actual episodes? Also say one liberty I took so far with the story you liked, and one that you're not too crazy about. Just would like to get some general plot idea of what you guys think XD**

**~Mar**


	23. Touch and Go

Lloyd stood there for what felt like hours, leaning against the thin wood walls of the ship's interior, pulled into his own thoughts, rethinking what he could have said to his father instead of the scolding. It should have been the other way around. He should have been getting yelled at with all the trouble he seemed to cause for people.

"Hey!" Nya called out to everyone on the ship. "Zane and his bird found something!" she excitedly said.

Everyone rushed up, even Lloyd who wasn't really paying attention to Nya's talking. "We found Serpentine going underground! Right Zane?" she grinned, looking at the white ninja who nodded.

"Yes Nya," Zane took over. "Through the Mountain of a Million Steps, Pythor and his snakes must have dug an underground hall for them to hide in. Ouroboris would be too predictable and my 'falcon eyes' have found a small group of Skales and several minions heading inside".

"And what of the fang blades?" Wu asked.

"We thought about that sir," Nya nodded. "We think that Pythor has left to grab the last one himself. So judging by the traffic of snakes, Zane and I believe that the first three they dug up is in this underground hall being guarded by the whole Serpentine army".

"Problematic…" Wu commented, "Pythor is a smart one for coming up with that plan… no way you will be able to charge in and get through without being noticed… or captured… four ninja against an army of that scale will not work…"

"So, we'll all go in and just swipe them back using cheap tricks our full potentials? I love it," Kai grinned.

Lloyd perked up at the thought of kicking Serpentine tail; it would take his mind off a fight to the death with his father. "Then let's go!"

Wu held his hand to hold Lloyd back and looked down at him. "No nephew, you will have to stay behind, now that you are the green ninja, we must protect you even more now".

Lloyd's eyes widened. "Are you serious?" Lloyd looked up at all of them. "Now I can't do anything at all? If I'm a ninja, then I can help this time!"

Cole sighed, "Look your high- listen…" he got down on one knee, "Kid, we just want you safe… we're only thinking about you"

"That's the excuse for everything all my life…" Lloyd stepped back, lowering his head.

Wu patted him on the head gently, "We'll stay behind, you and I…"

Lloyd nodded, defeated.

"Actually sir…" Nya smirked, "I made a new adjustment to that mech suit I've been tinkering with," the black haired girl led the others outside on the main deck and showed off the second person chamber. "I thought you'd like to have a chance to fly in with us". She placed her hands on her hips proudly.

Wu looked back at his nephew, smiling, "Well, it looks like you'll have to mind the ship by yourself Lloyd".

The new green ninja's heart sank. Becoming the green ninja was the worst thing that had ever happened to him so far. Why were the other four so keen on finding out if they were the one?

_"Oh yea… because they hate my father and would give no second thoughts with killing him…" _Lloyd thought to himself.

He would have gladly given his power and fate over to someone else who could do the job. He was useless, never fought a day in his life and did not look forward to any training.

He waved goodbye as Wu, Nya, and the ninja left the Bounty to steal the fang blades back from the Serpentine cavern.

The boy looked out the window of the ship and loudly sighed. "I wonder where you guys are now…" he thought out loud, thinking of his parents.

Misako heard the footsteps coming closer. She tightened her grip on her shoulder bag and backed up against a cluster of rocks that her tall enough to hide her height, she wasn't even that tall to begin with.

"Who's there?" an angry and familiar voice came. She didn't dare move and show herself. Not that she was afraid, but because she didn't have the time to deal with him. "I know someone is there…"

Still she refused to move and then heard his heavy footsteps walk around the boulders. "Lloyd! If that's you, I'm gonna-" His angry look faded when he saw her. "It's you…"

"Yes… me…" she tucked grayed hair behind her ear, frowning at the way he said it. "I needed to follow the ninja's ship…" she stood upright. "Didn't know I'd run into you…" she looked away with a bit of a pout.

"I just came from there…" Garmadon slowly nodded. He talked to her like he was focused but she knew what had went down after the volcano erupted. "But I was just leaving… things to do… a kingdom to take over… you know how it is…"

She looked down and away, "So then… you now know what our son is…" she clasped her hands together. "Right?"

"He has to kill me…" he looked at her. Her green eyes flicked up to meet his red ones. He looked betrayed. She bit the inside of her lip. "Please… come back with me… you're all I have left…" it was plead not a just a request. He lifted a hand to her cheek and pressed his lips against hers for a moment before she could answer.

She closed her hands around his black hands and pulled back quickly. "You already know the answer to that… I would recommend not asking questions whose answers you know or wish to not know," she softly said. Her eyes turned serious, "But let me make this clear to you". She swallowed, trying to have authority in her voice. "You cannot see me anymore…" she let go. "No more… I can't be near you again…"

She walked past him and readjusted her scroll case and should bag. "Is it for your own good? Or for mine?"

She stopped in her tracks. "You always think I have some ulterior motive don't you?" She looked behind her shoulder. "You don't believe that I look out for myself?"

Garmadon let himself smile, "Misako, when have you ever really thought about yourself?"

She shook her head and went on her way in the opposite direction of him. She didn't want to admit it but… he was right about her.

Garmadon watched her disappear. He could have grabbed her and done whatever he wanted. He didn't need to ask her to come; he could've picked her up and dragged her off with him. She wouldn't put up much of a fight.

She told him to stay away for his own sake not hers. All she ever did was forget herself to make sure he would be okay; Lloyd too.

His feet suddenly became heavier as he walked the way he was going, farther away from those he loved. He was also thinking about what Lloyd said to him. It had hurt but in a way he was almost happy that his son wanted nothing to do with him now.

_Why did it still hurt then?_

_Oh yea… because he's right. _

He was selfish for leaving them. Lloyd wasn't wrong about that.

He looked back at the road behind him, "I could live a thousand lives and still not deserve either of them…"

**I know... it's short... also, lousy chap title right? Couldn't think of anything better sadly...** **aw the sweet Garmafeels...**

**Thank you for reading ;D Next chapter, Slither Pit, will be out tomorrow or Sunday! Because I just became swamped with VBS obligations, I am not only doing all the media presentations for four days and taking pics and teaching music, I'm gonna be in the skits after so yay! Not only that but she's giving me a choice whether to play the friend of the Captain, or to play the villain (which is really the captain's sister in disguise)**

**I'm gonna read the script over though, I most likely will choose the protag "Coco" because it was my mom's part and the director thought it'd be cute :3 **

**Well I went off on that... hahahahaha... oh my gosh Garsako gives me life in case you could not tell by my need to put that in this chapter (plus I guess it makes Garmadon wanna turn things around)**

**Thank you for reading!**

**~Mar**


	24. Slither Pit

"Shh…" Cole held his finger to his lips and slowly slid along the edge around cavern ceiling. Kai, Jay, and Zane slid in after him and Nya and Wu waited at the entrance for them to give a shout for help.

Below the four clans of Serpentine were milling about, talking and occasionally looking up but the four boys kept to the shadows in the high ceiling and no one noticed them.

"There they are!" Jay whispered, pointing to the pedestal in the center of the room with the nauseating green glow to it. The four then noticed that the floor had huge vats of green venom with pathways over them.

Kai nodded, "Okay… now what?" he looked over at their leader in black.

Cole frowned. No way could they slip through all those snakes without anyone noticing them. "Looks like we'll have to do this the hard way…" Cole said with annoyance.

He removed his scythe and dropped down from the high ceiling. The other three did the same. All snakes stared at them, not even moving to attack them.

"Now…" Cole turned his head slightly, hearing his neck give a small crack, "Hand over the fang blades or we'll have to do this the hard way".

The snakes battle cried and grabbed their own weapons abruptly as the four ninja went back to back to back to back.

"Well… I guess it's the hard way?" Cole's eyes widened as they charged, starting to regret the move he had made.

"Okay… True Potential time?" Zane looked back at the others who nodded.

"NINJA-GO!" They shouted together.

Zane glowed white and light blue, Cole glowed black with magenta, Kai glowed red and gold, and Jay glowed a bright blue and silver. They didn't need their weapons in hand to summon their newfound elemental powers. The snakes were thrown back by the force of all four firing beams of elemental energy at once.

Outside Nya and the sensei perked up a bit on hearing the shouting. The maiden with black hair shook her head slowly, "Leave it to them to get caught right away…" she strapped herself in. "Ready sir?" she looked up.

"Ready Nya," he answered.

The mech rattled less than the original model she made and Nya remembered to grease the joints this time so it moved with a fluid motion.

They barreled through and joined the fight with the four ninja. "Okay sensei," Nya looked up at where Wu was harnessed in. "You know how to work a bow caster?" she brought her metal arm around and slammed four Serpentine into a wall.

Wu fiddled with the mechanism in the top seat he sat at and started loading metal harpoon arrows and fired them off, piercing the charging snakes. "Nice shot!" Jay laughed; he was back in his normal ninja suit, sending bolts of lightning at the Serpentines' tails.

As Nya's muscles tensed as she pulled her ropes to control the mech, she panted, "Should have warmed up a bit more before working this thing". She felt sweat forming around her eyes and cheeks from under her red mask.

More snakes started piling on the ninja, trying to keep them from moving so fast. Then… the king of the Serpentine slithered on in, the fourth fang blade in his clawed grasp.

"Well, looks like I was right about you pathetic ninja…" his tail swished behind him. He looked very pleased with himself as he grabbed Cole by the neck. The earth ninja was being restrained by two Constrictai. "You were foolish enough to come into the belly of the beast".

The mech Nya was controlling started smoking and her muscles gave out and her metal machine toppled over. "SIS!" Kai screamed as a Fangpyre tried to puncture her throat with their fangs. She held her head back, trying to keep her throat from the creature who teased her.

Lloyd sat on the deck, looking up at the mountain his uncle and friends disappeared into. He rolled his neck back, groaning from boredom and then he heard screaming. It was Nya's loud and high pitch.

The young boy's eyes widened he knew they must have been captured. "Dad we gotta help-" he caught himself.

Garmadon was gone. No more; left to his dark world so he could just come back and take over this one. And the prince Lloyd would be the only thing between his dad and the safety of the world.

The young boy bit the inside of his lip and ran into his uncle's room. He searched through an old chest and then he found it; the green ninja suit he would wear someday.

He took off his outer robes and tied the belt as tightly as possible. Lloyd's frame was small for a child of his age. Thinking back, his father was always tall. "Must follow my mom…" he mumbled as he tried to roll up the pant legs and sleeves and tucked them into a pair of boots and gloves that were also a little too big for him.

He shook that thought away because there was his real family, as he called Nya and the ninja, to save now.

He tried to run in the suit that was twice his size, hopping over the wood railing and started up the steps of the mountain to save the day!

"Lloyd?" Garmadon ran back after not five minutes of the prince's departure from the landed Bounty. "Lloyd?" he said again. No one was there.

He looked up the mountain to see a little figure in green climbing down into the mouth of the mountain. He cursed. "You're not a ninja yet!" he shook his head. He knew just what to do though and headed down another trail, knowing he could prove to Lloyd he could be there for him.

"The ninja have been caught!" Skales raised his staff. "And the four fang blades have been found!"

The underlings hooted and raised their fists as they looked up to the ninja, Nya, and Wu in their large cages, like they were pet birds.

"And we shall celebrate! With a Slither Pit!"

Acidious operated the levers of the pit the forged when making the underground hall. The six above watched below as their weapons were under lock and key by the other four generals under Pythor's command. They just had to wait now for the right moment, or maybe Lloyd would become the great green ninja in ten minutes or so.

They… didn't get their hopes up for that second idea.

Lloyd poked his head through the door way and grinned. He stood with his hands on his hips and grinned. "LET MY FRIENDS GO! BY ORDER OF THE GREEN NINJA!"

Everyone turned around and stared at the child who started frowning when he took a minute to try and count all the snakes. He swallowed, rethinking his _brilliant _strategy.

"What does he think he's doing!?" Jay looked down, mouth dropped, hands clutching the bars of the cage.

"GET HIM!" A Hypnobrai shouted, lunging for Lloyd. He grabbed the prince by the forearms as the blonde struggled to get out of the strong grasp. Lloyd gritted his teeth and bit down on the Hypnobrai's hand.

"AAAAH! THE BRAT BIT ME!" the snake shouted in pain but didn't let go. A couple of the Fangpyre snickered at him.

"HEY!" Everyone looked for the owner of the newest voice. "LET MY SON GO YOU FILTHY SNAKES!"

"DAD!" Lloyd grinned wide. He looked back at the Hypnobrai and Venomari holding him. "You guys are gonna get so messed up!" he laughed.

Behind the dark lord was an army of the very skeleton warriors the Ninja had to fight when rescuing Nya months ago. "Why would those skeletons fight with you!? You betrayed Samukai and all of them!" Pythor pointed.

"Wanna know why?!" Nuckal stepped forward with Kruncha, boney arms folded.

"Because no one likes a snake!" Kruncha continued, shouting with a fist shaking in the air.

The skeletons charged down and so did the Serpentine. Garmadon grabbed Lloyd and climbed up and unlocked the ninja as well as their weapons. "You came back…" Lloyd looked up. "How did you know?"

Garmadon held two of his swords and smacked a pair of Serpentine away and to a skeleton to be smacked again. "I didn't know… I came back to talk to you and I saw what was happening…" He shoved Lloyd behind him. "Now stay behind me…"

"THE FANG BLADES!" Nya grabbed her sword, and pulled her red cape over her shoulders and finished tying it together. She charged over to them with Zane and Kai, fighting off the snakes as they went with her rapier.

"HAVE THEM YET!?" Wu called over to them, staff crossed with one of the Constrictai's maces.

Nya held two up and Zane and Kai held one each. "Got em!"

"Let's go then," Garamdon grabbed his son's hand, being the first to start out of the wretched snake den.

Nuckal waved, "You leave! We'll keep fighting the good fight!" he laughed. From behind two Fangpyre toppled over him.

Garmadon rolled his eyes, "Sure… okay…"

Lloyd giggled.

**Thanks for reading! :D **

**~Mar**


	25. Stolen

Nya was the first to jump over the ship's side and skipped every other stair step up to the main cabin. "Fire up the ship! Quickly!" Jay jumped as Nya did so.

Cole grabbed Wu's hand and pulled him up as well before they took off, "Where to next sir?"

"Torchfire Mountain," Wu brushed his white tunic off. "We must destroy the fang blades as quickly as possible…" mountain became smaller and smaller as they sailed away.

"Hey…" Kai looked up from his seat. "Anyone saw Pythor before we left?" The red ninja looked back as the Mountain of a Million steps.

The others looked at one another and shook their heads. "The coward probably just slunk off to hide," Cole grimaced.

Lloyd was throwing punches into Cole's old punching bag in their makeshift training room below deck. Garmadon let a bit of smile slip and then looked out the doorway, "I'll be right back… I'm going to find out what your uncle plans to do next with the horrible fang blades…" the dark lord left his son to his own fun.

"Okay!" Lloyd threw another punch into the bag. He waited until his dad was gone to bite his knuckles in pain. He shook his hand off after that and stepped back a couple of feet.

Lloyd tried to spin around do a kick; just like he watched his friends do it when they train. However, before the kick was landed, something pulled him back by the collar of the oversized ninja suit he wore, making him trip backwards.

He grunted as he was thrust forward into the heavy bag. "oooow," he moaned. He tried to turn his head back to see who was doing this to him when a purple hand materialized and then next to the prince's face, the narrow, angry face of his least favorite Serpentine. "Pythor…" he growled.

"Tell me where the fang blades are you fool…" the Anacondrai hissed with seething rage. "That little stunt your father pulled will not go unpunished…" he tied Lloyd up to the bag as tightly as possible. "I'll sic the Devourer on him first!" he threatened, a hand at the boy's throat. Lloyd whimpered, terrified.

The purple snake then ripped a piece of fabric from the left pant leg of Lloyd's uniform and gagged his mouth with it. Lloyd tried to scream but all the way under the deck and with the door shut, no one could hear him.

"Torchfire Mountain… of course… I remember when our… father took us up there…" Garmadon looked out the window. "Well… you can just drop me off because, I'm leaving now…"

"Why? You could be such an ally if you turn from evil," Zane tried to sound reasonable. "You have a will of your own…"

Garmadon frowned, "For the wisest of the ninja you're very stupid…" he bluntly said, "If I could not hold back against my own love's wishes, what makes you think I can do it for any of you?" he folded his arms.

Nya frowned, "How about not for us… how about for Lloyd? Your own son…" the black haired girl's brown eyes looked down sadly at the thought of Lloyd having o fight his dad. She could never do such a thing if her father was still around. "I know you still love him more than your own life… and he loves you too…"

Garmadon looked down. "Dar would have been proud to see what his daughter has grown into… You're a rather wise young girl Nya…" he complimented her, "But I'm afraid nothing can keep me tied to the light…"

The brown eyed girl slowly nodded as the taller man walked out and down below deck where he last left Lloyd.

As they were talking though, the next room over held the four fang blades ready for grabbing when they arrived; laid out in a neat row by Zane earlier.

Invisible hands swept the four blades into his satchel and when he heard Nya and Jay readying to land the ship, he slipped onto the deck and left just as quickly as he had come.

"Lloyd, I'm leaving for good now-" Garmadon opened the door and stopped when he saw his son tied and gagged. "LLOYD!" he ran after over to him.

Kai and Cole were right behind him and they looked around to see what enemy was on board. "Kid! What happened?!" Kai knelt down.

Lloyd coughed and then swallowed before answering, "Pythor! He tied me up and was gonna steal the fang blades and said he'd feed my dad to the Great Devourer first!" the blonde angrily said.

"THE FANG BLADES!" Cole was the first to up and out into Nya's control room. Wu, Jay, Zane, and Nya rushed into the small makeshift dining area and saw that the four blades they fought so hard to gain were gone.

"This can't be happening!" Jay rubbed his eyes. "If Pythor stole the blades from us that means he'll be in Ouroboris!"

"Then let's go quickly!" Wu looked at Nya who grabbed the wheel of their ship and made a hard turn, rocking the flying boat to the left.

Garmadon put his foot down hard, "Then let me off because I'm not going on this ridiculous trip!" he snapped. Lloyd looked up, shocked. "Come on Lloyd, you can still come with me if you want to-"

Lloyd jerked his hand back from his father. "No way!" the much shorter boy scrunched his nose, "I'm gonna help my friends save our- my kingdom!" the young green ninja held his head up, set in his ways. "And you never gave two darns about us! So just go!" he shouted. "Why did you even come back to help if you weren't gonna care enough to finish the job?"

"I-"

"You told me not to corrupt myself for you! So I won't… I thought you would want to save the land you called home… but you're so long gone you yourself don't even care about people…" the child took in another breath before deciding to add the last part; "Including me and mom…"

Everyone looked shocked at the child and then looked to the side at his father. The words obviously stung him hard but he didn't want to show it. "Okay then… I see how it is…" he took one step back. "Goodbye brother…" he glanced at Wu. "The five fools that follow him," he gestured to the five teenagers behind Wu.

He looked down at Lloyd, "And goodbye son…" he frowned, "I hope the next time we meet… you'll kill me quickly and get it over with…" he added.

Lloyd's eyes widened. Throwing the burn back at him didn't make his stomach feel so good.

Out the deck door the dark lord walked and just like before, he vanished.

"Lloyd… are…. Are you gonna be okay?" Jay took a step towards the boy.

Lloyd started nodding slowly then did it faster. Tears were welling up in his emerald eyes until Nya finally got to her knees and let the young prince cry and hug her first and picked him up. "Oh Lloyd… shh…" she hushed as he cried.

The dark lord waited seconds before leaving and was glad he did. He wasn't relieved his son was in tears, he was just relieved he regretting yelling at him and still didn't want to kill him.

**Aaaw... I just feel so bad for the whole family! *yanks on hair* The Garmadon Family gives me life... in case you could not tell...**

**Thank you for reading ^-^ **

**~Mar**


	26. The Race to Scatter Canyon

Chapter 25: Race to Scatter Canyon:

The clouds swirled dark gray and lighting started when they neared Ouroboris. "Where did sensei Wu go?" Kai was the first to notice their missing mentor.

Zane perked up and then looked around quickly before going over to the railing and looked out, "He must have slipped away to confront Pythor himself… we need to get down there!"

Jay and Cole quickly mounted on their Pegasus and gryphon, Kai hopped on with Jay and Zane with Cole, leaving Nya and Lloyd to stay aboard the Bounty as a precaution.

Below, in the city, Pythor plugged in the four blades to the hollow teeth crevices in the statue of the Devourer and gave an evil grin to himself.

"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!"

The Anacondrai turned around quickly and looked down at Wu standing in the center of the destroyed Slither Pit ring where her forced The Red Mask and the ninja to fight while Lloyd was captured.

"I'm going to take back this world from you wretched surface dwellers!" Pythor laughed maniacally.

He slithered down and stood, looking down at Wu, "LOOK!" He turned, gesturing to the large stature.

Green venom oozed from holding chambers in the teeth hollows and dripped down into the swirl pattern cracks under Wu's feet. The statue then crumbled down to a pile of rubble and Pythor stood, speechless as to where the Devourer was. "What!? It's not in the statue!?"

The venom oozed deeper than the initial cracks and the ground started splitting apart. "SENSEI!"

Wu turned quickly and saw the four ninja standing in the gateway to the arena and shook his head. "STAY BACK!" he held a hand out to all of them.

The ground shook and split, opening more and more. Pythor tried to slither away but Wu grabbed him tightly and pulled him back. "No you don't! You are coming with me!" he narrowed his eyes.

The ground cracked all the way and then, rose the mighty green snake from his slumber, a thousand feet over their heads.

"OH MY-" Jay gaped at the monster that had awoken, speechless.

The Devourer's pink eyes scanned the ground beneath him and became fixed on Wu and Pythor. The Anacondari tremble with fear as the mighty snake beast opened his massive jaw and shut it around them.

The four teenagers' eyes widened in terror. They all screamed together uselessly and they started running the other way as the Devourer turned to them next. "RUN!" Cole screamed, voice cracking.

Jay and Cole turned their golden weapons into the creatures and pulled Kai and Zane aboard and flew as fast as they could to the Bounty's deck. Nya ran outside, "What happened?! Where's sensei!?"

"HE'S GONE!" Jay was still screaming from fear.

"WHAT!?" Nya and Lloyd shouted together, not believing.

Zane dashed past the two to the wheel, "Just fly this stupid thing!" Nya quickly followed him and tried to go as fast as they could.

Jay, Kai, and Cole were still screaming and Lloyd started panicking too. "You guys are not helping!" Nya growled as she tried to turn the ship around a mountain curve, her muscles showing as they strained to obey Nya's commands.

"Where are you going?" Kai asked.

"Scatter Canyon! We're gonna shake him off in there!" Nya spun the wheel as hard as she could. "He'll be too big to fit through!" Everyone was knocked to the side against the walls as she did so.

"He's gaining!" Cole gritted his teeth, looking out the back window. He ran out and below deck.

"What are you gonna do!?" Jay followed the black ninja.

"Let's get rid of some stuff so we'll go faster!" Cole poked his head from below the deck. Kai, Zane, and Jay ran down to join him while Lloyd was the eyes for Nya in the back.

They tossed over several chests and crates of supplies and back up weapons on the sandy ground below the ship. Cole tossed over his old punching bag and ran back to toss more when Lloyd started noticing something. "Is it just me… or is it getting bigger?"

Nya looked behind her, one hand still on the wheel. She gasped and then shouted, "STOP! DON'T TOSS ANYTHING ELSE!"

Before they could stop the last thing the ninja tossed over was Wu's blue tea pot. The Devourer's enormous teeth closed around it and it grew in size yet again before the boys could realize it.

"Oh no…" Zane bit his lip.

"SCATTER CANYON AHEAD!" Nya shouted again.

"TOO LATE IT'S ON TOP OF US!" Kai ran up the wooden steps into Nya's control room and grabbed Lloyd by the hand. "We're jumping! Come on!" he took Nya's hand with his second hand and dragged them outside.

She let go on the deck and went under to fire her mech up quickly. Lloyd strapped himself into the second chamber she made for his uncle while the four others turned their gold weapons into the four creatures and they jumped.

**Woo, this one's done. It was a little hard strangely enough... **

**Oh and BTW, that "Kill Bill Crossover"? Some asked what it was... not sure if I gave an actual explanation; Kill Bill is a two part movie set rated R movie by Quentin Tarantino. It's VERY BLOODY and has some sexual stuff (not a whole lot but in the first one), and language. It's a revenge flick and is about a former hit assassin from a small circle because they turned on her so she sets out to get her revenge. Very well done movies. (and mine will be toned down)**

**So yea Garmadon fits the role of Bill sort of well and Misako would HAVE to be Black Mamba... **

**AHEM back to this... thank you for reading :D **

**~Mar**


	27. The Ultrasonic Raider

They landed hard on the ground and the Bounty started losing control without Nya to pilot it. After they recovered from the drop, the six took shelter in a cave with a small entrance and watched as their beloved ship was crunched in two by the massive snake's powerful jaw.

Tears were in Jay and Nya's eyes as they watched the thing they worked so hard on together fall to pieces and eaten by the same monster that took their master. Everyone else had a similar look just because they loved that old ship they found, not a month ago, so much.

They didn't move from their hiding place and the Great Devourer slithered off to look for more to eat.

The ninja and Nya carefully stepped out of the cave and looked at one another. "Now what?" Nya whispered, still shaken up by the chase.

Everyone was trembling and the adrenaline that coursed through them throughout the entire time was leaving their bodies and panic rose up once again when they realized there were hundreds of other people in Ninjago, not just them.

"We must stop it," Zane nodded.

Jay let out a scoff, "Uh… hey are we all forgetting that that giant snake JUST TORE APART OUR SHIP IN ONE BITE?! AND ATE OUR SENSEI AND KING?" Jay shouted. "HOW CAN WE POSSIBLY DEFEAT THIS THING?! WE ARE HOOPED! HOW CAN WE DO ANYTHING WITHOUT THE KING HUH?!"

He heavily breathed and lounged out on his side, defeated by the situation.

Nya had her hands on her hips with a frown, "Are you done yet?"

"Yes," he nodded and went back to lying, sprawled out, on the desert ground.

Cole sighed, "You know, we need to save the kingdom… the whole land…" he looked out at the rising sun. "What would Wu do?"

"How about find a way to stop it instead of sitting around like defeated fools?" Kai snapped. "Come on… I have an idea…"

Lloyd swallowed as they walked on, "If my uncle is gone… then that means…" he looked up.

"Yes Lloyd, you are our king…" Zane put an arm around the prince.

"But I'm not ready to be! I mean… I'm only twelve! How can I do anything? I can't even use my so called powers…" he looked at his hands. They had a couple cuts when they crash landed.

Nya left her mech back at the canyon and hopped on Jay's Pegasus and Lloyd rode with Zane on Frost.

Kai led the entire way, leaving the others to wonder what crazy idea the fire ninja had for defeating the monster.

They rode into the forests and down into the farmlands of the valley all but Zane and Lloyd grew up in, heading for a familiar barn. Jay slid off, helping Nya off of Thunder Whip and looked the blue barn up and down.

"Uh… why are we at my house?" the blue ninja blinked.

Kai opened the barn doors and revealed a mountain of scraps and junk. "Because we're going to make a weapon for ourselves!"

The little town seemed barren, the sun was up higher now but it was still strange to see no one around, but it didn't matter now. Jay quickly ran into check on his parents but quickly came back out, "Not home… looks like no one is…"

There was rumbling below their feet and Nya spotted something big moving underground. "Hurry guys…" she looked back, holding Lloyd close to her.

"NINJA-GO!" The four boys threw their hoods on and used their Spinjitsu together and combined the four tornadoes. "TORNADO OF CREATION!"

Out of the barn scraps of metal and wood were sucked out and into the white and green tornado to create something new.

When the light and elements cleared, the four boys were inside a tank like structure, each with a control to help it move. "How do ya like it Nya?" Jay stuck his head out. "Pretty slick huh? I put in the design when we were making it".

"I love it!" Nya smiled wide, cheeks pinking.

The attention was turned back to the Devourer who was closing in. "Zane?" Cole pointed to the white ninja. "You said there was a device in you to hold sound right?"

Zane nodded, "Yes… a recording machine of sorts…" he opened up a small hatch under his white sleeve and flicked a switch. It played back the sounds of the flute from his memory.

"Perfect…" Cole grinned.

Kai looked up from his seat in their new machine. "So Jay… explain how this works?" he looked at the levers.

Jay cracked his knuckles and slipped a pair of goggles on. "Okay, thank you Ninja Crew, today we'll be driving what I like to call; The Ultrasonic Raider!" he announced.

"Skip the titles and formalities sparky!" Cole snapped from his seat next to Kai.

"Basically this," he patted the metal interior structure, "Zane will operate the very top which is made completely out of metal," he looked up at Zane from the hatch they had.

"Gotta go faster buddy…" Cole bit his lip watching the Devourer get closer with Kai.

Jay nodded, "Do whatever you do to… make the flute noise and metal amplifies sound which are also installed above in small tunnels to project it out. Just play the flute and bounce it off the metal to make it louder through the tunnels will aim and project it and the Devourer will hear it! He is a Serpentine after all!"

"Wow Jay… that's actually kind of smart…" Kai blinked.

"Just a little ingenuity!" Jay proudly smiled, knocking his knuckles against the side of his head. "Now Kai, Cole, you're operating the bottom wheels to get us to move! Pump the levers together to get it to move!"

"And you?" Cole raised an eyebrow, glancing up through his hatch.

Jay rolled his blue eyes, "Well someone needs to steer us and you and Kai are the stronger two on this team".

"What about us?" Lloyd looked up.

Jay poked his head out of his view window. "Right now just steer clear!" he saluted. "We'll take care of this!"

They all looked over, and under one of the closer fields, the Devourer ripped through the earth and stood tall over their tank.

"NOW ZANE!" The three guys shouted.

Zane flipped the switch like before and amplified the sound. The snake's head decoration retracted down and it hissed.

"Louder!" Kai looked out the back, trying to help Jay and Cole in turning their machine around.

Zane tried to turn it louder and Kai's brown eyes widened when he saw it; a glowing green soft spot on the top of the Devourer's head. "Hey! Aim for that weak spot!"

But the snake was already turning in the other direction. "Alright!" the other boys hopped out.

Nya climbed inside and started making her own adjustments while the boys hooted. Zane was still on the top section when he noticed where the snake's underground trail was heading to.

"Guys!" the others looked up. "It's heading for the Imperial City!" he pointed.

The others gasped and all hopped back in. Nya and Cole took the bottom levers while Lloyd sat up with Jay and Kai was in the back, taking his gold sword out and using it to spit fire.

"Until Nya can make her adjustments I'll be the fire power!"

The Ultrasonic Raider carried the four ninja, Nya, and Lloyd, off to the Imperial City, bouncing over hills, fields, and rocky trails.

**Ugh, boring chapter... well... sort of anyways... oh hey yea! Almost forgot, I met Jay Vincent today and showed him my AU concept art/designs and he loved them :) He actually said if I send him this AU, he'll pass it along to the Hageman brothers to take a look at C: He is the way coolest dude ever! I was honored to meet him ^-^ **

**Ahem... thank you for stickin around and reading. **

**~Mar**


	28. Day of the Devourer

Garmadon walked up the stepped to the old tea house where his brother went a week ago to find him in the Dark Realm. Inside he placed the silver coins down, "Traveler's Tea…"

The old woman, Mystake wasn't paying attention as she organized her shelves. All she said was, "Only a fools buys that one!" she turned around quickly with a scowl when she saw Garmadon's grimace. "But you are… obviously not a fool…" she swallowed. "I'll be right back…" she scurried into the cellar.

The dark lord looked out a window upon hearing a rumbling and saw it; the Devourer heading for the Imperial City.

He looked back at the counter and sighed, taking the money back. "Oh why do I bother?" he turned around and started running.

The ninja and Nya arrived to the Imperial City where all looked rather fine. It seemed that it was even more busy than normal actually but not with panic.

"Everything looks normal…" Nya quietly said, looking around.

"Doesn't mean anything… come on," Cole jumped out with the other following.

That's when the Devourer rose from the ground, knocking over several houses and shops. Then the panicking and screaming started. The six teens and child stood together in the chaos, helpless of what to do.

"Give me the weapons…" The six turned around.

"Dad?" Lloyd blinked. "I thought you'd never come back!"

The dark lord sighed, "Well I guess I'm not all that bad then…" he looked at the four. "Only I can stop the Devourer… give me the four weapons, only I can hold them all at once," he held two of his hands out.

"No way!" Jay held his nun chucks close in a hugging form. "You will not take Thunder Whip from me!"

Garmadon blinked. "What?"

Kai sighed, "That's what he named the creature it turns into…" he explained quickly.

"Still, he's not getting our weapons," Cole agreed with the lightning ninja to his left. Zane stepped back in agreement.

Garmadon pinched the bridge of his nose in irritation. "Apparently you don't realize that if you don't let me have the weapons, we'll all die right?" he looked nervously at the monster, terrorizing the city. "Why would I want to rule a world where everyone is dead by the jaws of that insufferable snake?"

Kai bit his lip and tossed him his sword. "Guys, just do it," he looked at the other three who reluctantly tossed their weapons.

"I don't think this needs to be said but… we're gonna need those back," Jay pointed.

Garmadon just laughed a little too manically for their comfort and ran off. "KEEP HIM BUSY FOR ME! HOLD HIM IN ONE SPOT!" He disappeared behind a cluster of buildings.

"Hold him in one spot!?" Cole asked back but the king of the Underworld was gone to who knows where.

"We can't even fly around the city!" Jay held his head, pulling on his short, messy hair. "We are so hooped!"

Then there was a chorus of roars and fire, earth, lightning, and ice beams spat out and hit the Devourer's face, enraging it.

"Wait a minute…" Kai's eyebrows went up and he turned around.

"OUR DRAGONS!" Jay pointed. "HI WISP!" he waved excitedly, hopping up and down like a little boy.

"They look… different…" Cole blinked.

Zane smiled wide, "they have unlocked their true potentials too… look; they've grown bigger," he gestured to them.

Jay broke into a run when the four dragons landed. "Let's do this then!" he grinned, jumping onto Wisp's back and saddled up as did the others.

"Sis, protect Lloyd and the people!" Kai looked down as they started off. "Come on guys! I have an idea! But we're gonna need our own true potentials!"

Cole headed off first and Rocky's tail flapped, teasing the Serpentine monster and cornered around a block of buildings. Cole took his right hand and moved it up, the ground moving up with it and slowing the snake down more as it slithered over the mounds.

As he passed the next house, he slapped hands with Jay who took off next around the bend on Wisp. Jay held his hand up, blue sparks around it, and he thrust it back, zapping the Devourer in the snout, angering it even more than it already was. "Uh oh…"

He passed the next check point and tagged Zane and Shard. "Kai, coming your way!" Zane shouted, the ice ninja's body glowed white and blue and a trail of ice weaved to their enemy's eyes and the white ninja tagged Kai off for the last length of their relay chase.

Kai and Flame flew low between the widespread buildings; the larger wingspan of the red dragon scrapped the sides of the houses every so often. Kai pulled up just when they reached their destination.

The Devourer's mouth opened wide, set on chomping on the fire ninja and his pet but his teeth met something soft and green and it hissed in pain when it realized it had bit his own tail.

Kai flew past Garmadon with the four gold weapons in his hands and he gave the thumbs up and short nod.

Garmadon stood above the snake, looking down at the creature that ruined his life, "You…" He growled, "You made me what I am…" he set his teeth together. "You took my brother… my wife… and my son away from me… you bit me once; see how it feels to be bitten back!" he shouted and jumped, aiming for the weak spot Kai found earlier.

When he and the gold weapons made contact with the Devourer, an explosion of green ooze washed over the Imperial City. Lloyd and Nya were on top of the highest building they could find and it barely hit them.

Kai, Cole, Zane, and Jay landed in the city square where others were helping each other up and trying to get out of there, others were clapping and applauding their heroes.

"Where's my dad?" Lloyd and Nya ran over.

The others started looking around as well. "GREAT!" Jay growled. "I knew we shouldn't have trusted him!"

"Regardless, he still saved us," Zane tried to see the lighter side of things.

"What about sensei Wu?" Cole looked around. They saw everyone but him. It looked like him and Pythor didn't make it. Everyone had a sick feeling in their stomach.

The green ninja then spied something . "What's that?" Lloyd blinked, pointing to someone climbing out of the green guts of the Devourer.

The old man wiped his face off and the ninja grinned. "SENSEI!" they ran over to him quickly, slipping in the ooze around their ankles. "You're alive!"

"Out of my way!" Wu shoved past the six kids. They saw he picked a tea pot out of the slime. "I thought I would never see you again," he held the pot close, leaving the kids to laugh.

"What about… my dad?" Lloyd walked over to and tugged on his uncle's white sleeve.

Wu sighed and held the boy's hand. "What nothing… you will be trained by Ninjago's finest. You will defeat your father, and you will succeed".

"We have your back all the way kid," Kai put his hands on the boy's shoulders and Lloyd looked up with a smile.

"We'll teach you everything we know," Cole ruffled his hair, standing on the left of Kai.

"And never stop until you're ready," Jay patted Lloyd on the back on the right.

"Because we'll be right by your side through it all…" Zane smiled.

Nya hugged the boy, "And because we're a family".

Lloyd smiled as he looked up at the much taller teens around him, hugging each one. He felt far better now about learning to fight.

**Wow, this one's one away from being done! I bet ya'll are thinking "Wait... it's done right!?" well then you don't know me very well do you? Hahahaha... ha... yeeeea... **

**So thanks for reading! I'm happy to be getting this one done. After this, we'll be taking a short break before diving into the next one, okay? Around my birthday so... in about... a week and half or so? I'm not so sure... I may start posting my Kill Bill Crossover because it actually won;t be very long to read.**

**See ya guys later**

**~Mar**


	29. When the Day Met the Night

He walked down the long, dark, winding trails through the forests near the mountain ridge bases that were lit by only the bright light of the pale gray moon that each gold weapon reflected.

"Do you remember on our wedding day? Your father gave us those necklaces?"

Garmadon quickly turned to look around upon hearing the sweet and distant voice. He looked up to see her silhouette against the full moon. She was staring down at something in her hands. Her green eyes looked over and held up a white charm with a black dot. It was half of something.

"Yin and Yang…" she whispered. "Life and Death… Sun and moon". She looked up. "Light and shadow…" She traced the shape.

He knew what she was talking about. On the day they were married his father strangely enough gave them two halves of a necklace. Misako received the white half, Yang, which belonged to his father many years ago. He himself possessed the black half, Yin, which belonged to his mother before she died when he was young.

"That is what we are…" she quietly said. "You are darkness… you are evil… death… you are the sun that burns people if they get too close… I'm the light in the dark… the moon… I'm the calm and you're the storm that comes after. I never understood why he gave them to us but now I see what he was trying to tell me after all…"

"And… what was that…?" he asked. It wasn't bitterly but it had an edge to it.

She shifted herself to be looking away more, "He warned me… but I didn't know it… he told me that when there is balance, the shadow is on one side of the scale… and light is on the other… He told me a strange little thing with that too; 'The sun died everyday just so the moon could breathe.'" She bit her lip. "And that means that the sun and moon could never be together or balance was thrown… Sunset was when they met, and then they saw each other no more…"

"Don't say it…" He squeezed his eyes shut.

"We can never really be together…" her shoulders shook. "It was all an illusion… you and I… why do you think we are in this position? We broke the rules of the scale… now we're paying for it…"

"Prophecies are only as true as the people involved believe…"

She looked over her shoulder, "What a silly notion…" she looked into his eyes. "It doesn't matter because it's happening before our eyes…"

"What does… the prophecy… the _full _one… say?" he dared to ask.

She closed her eyes:

"In his eighteenth year, the child of green, born in the dark times, will rise up; he will fight the would-be king; the king of shadows, and all the land will mourn for the lost soul when he falls from the sky and the child is victorious. He shall posses the power of the First Spinjitsu Master, and there will be light and joy back in the kingdom that was once this way, before the would-be king fell. The dark one will be destroyed and the shaken land will be still forever more".

He sat down near her. "I can't kill him… I can't even raise a hand to that boy… I couldn't even scold him when he snapped back at me…" he covered his face. "How can I fight him?"

"I don't know how it will happen but it will… I see the signs everyday…" she sat back to back with him. She tilted her head up against his upper back, feeling him breathe against her. "And now that you have destroyed the Devourer… you plan on doing something twisted with the weapons… right?"

"So you'll try and steal them back from me…" He looked back at her, still covetous over the gold weapons.

"No…" she admitted. "I can't change a thing…" she looked back at her white charm. "I can't stop you… even though I have to watch you and our child fight to the death… like it's some sick joke…" Her voice surprisingly calm.

"Lloyd was our miracle child Misako… " She leaned back, feeling her weight against him. "But I don't believe what you say about us breaking the rules…"

Her eyes opened and she looked back with turning. "What do you believe?" She asked simply out of curiosity.

"With light there is always shadow…" he held something in his hand. He held the other half of the charm up. She held hers up too, twisting her arm around and connected them. "The world is gray… not black and white like how my father tried to tell people… like how my brother tries to tell his stupid students…"

She looked at the full symbol and sighed. On the black half there was a white spot and vice versa on her white one. He wasn't wrong. "Well nothing matters anymore… we must live with our mistakes…"

"_We_ weren't a mistake…" he leaned forward again and she sat up straight. "_Our son_ wasn't a mistake…" he tightly gripped his half of the charm. "I really thought we would be fine after Lloyd was born…"

"No matter what we can't go back up the paths we started…" her hands folded together in her lap. "You should leave…" She half-heartedly said. "I suppose we will see each other yet again… fate seems to want that to happen often…"

"I love you…" they still didn't look at each other.

Miles away from the two who broke the balance, the one who would save the balance slept fitfully; dreaming of the battle that would end his father's life.

**Oh look, the final chapter... O.O Thanks fpr sticking through this much longer chapter! Enjpy your feels as you will have to wait around... three weeks MAYBE less... for the 3rd installement to begin! Hahaha enjoy the anticipation of what I have written. **

**Love ya'll and thanks again!**

**~Mar**


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